Powerful Government Quotes

There is thus little or no ability for an internet user to know when they are being covertly propagandized by their government, which is precisely what makes it so appealing to intelligence agencies, so powerful, and so dangerous. ~ Glenn Greenwald

In an era when too many Americans are losing their jobs or working for less, trying to make ends meet, in close cases Judge [Samuel] Alito has ruled the vast majority of the time against the claims of the individual citizens. He has acted instead in favor of government, large corporations and other powerful interests. ~ Edward Kennedy

And, not only in Budapest. I worked very closely with a very powerful government organization, which shall remain unidentified, to develop the mass marketed version of the Cube. ~ Erno Rubik

During our long period of slumber the United States government has lost its moral authority. It is owned, operated, and controlled by Wall Street and Corporate America. The United States has become ungovernable, unfixable, and, therefore, unsustainable economically, politically, militarily, and environmentally. It has evolved into the wealthiest, most powerful, most materialistic, most racist, most militaristic, most violent empire of all times. ~ Thomas Naylor

Government not just for a few, it belongs to the common people. ~ Narendra Modi

We are witnessing the total collapse of a bad idea. Obamaism, a quasi-socialist commitment to a more powerful government at home and an abdication of American leadership around the world, is being exposed as a historic calamity. It is fueling domestic fear and global disorder and may well lead to a world war. ~ Michael Patrick Goodwin

However destructive may be the policies of the government and the methods and products of the corporations, the root of the problem is always found to be found in private life. We must learn to see that every problem that concerns us as conservationists always leads straight to the question of how we live. The world is being destroyed, no doubt about it, by the greed of the rich and powerful. It is also being destroyed by popular demand. ~ Wendell Berry

What patient can trust the knowledge of a physician without reputation or furniture, in a period when publicity is all-powerful and when the government gilds the lamp posts on the Place de la Concorde in order to dazzle the poor? ~ Honore De Balzac

Religion has been a powerful weapon in the hands of governments, in the hands of priests, in the hands of kings who have used it as a weapon to keep down the populace. It is a wonderful way of disciplining people and making them do what you want, to tell them that if they don't do what you want they will, for example, go to Hell. ~ Richard Dawkins

The ultimate authority resides in the people, and that if the federal government got too powerful and overstepped its authority, then the people would develop plans of resistance and resort to arms. ~ James Madison

Experience assures us, that the efficacy of the provision has been greatly over-rated; and that some more adequate defense is indispensably necessary for the more feeble, against the more powerful members of the government. ~ James Madison

We live in a time when to reject the idea of an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful government is to be viewed by that government as being anti-government. ~ Dave Champion

We [the Republicans] help the middle class when we unburden them from the very policies that Hillary Clinton would double down on. She champions Big Government, which we know enables crony capitalism and exacerbates inequality. If you are wealthy, powerful and well-connected, you can handle Big Government. ~ Carly Fiorina

Suppose hypothetically that one out of every 200 people or so is a jerk. In today's world these jerks will discover that if they enter government or business they can become super rich and powerful jerks. Do we conclude, therefore, that markets (or government) have caused greed? No, the fact is that once we no longer live in tiny tribes of 200, anonymity allows some people, who would have been assholes in a small tribe but who would have been sanctioned there, to go off and become jerks on a much, much larger scale. ~ Michael Strong

The more powerful government becomes, the more abuses it commits and the more lies it must tell. ~ James Bovard

Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds. ~ John Perry Barlow

In Parton's telling, the Village is "a permanent D.C. ruling class who has managed to convince themselves that they are simple, puritanical, bourgeois burghers and farmers, even though they are actually celebrity millionaires influencing the most powerful government on earth."17 It's not just the activist base of the left and the right who have recognized the widespread elite failure; more and more individual elites have broken ranks to acknowledge their own responsibility. ~ Christopher L. Hayes

The test of a government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who must depend on it. ~ Jimmy Carter

One of the greatest things I've ever seen happen was the morning I opened the newspaper and it said that some very powerful government officials had decided to change the name of "french fries" to "freedoom fries" and "french toast" to "freedom toast". It was impressive. I wanted to write a letter to them just to thank them, just for proving globally that they were absolute imbeciles. ~ Johnny Depp

[The U.S.S.R. was] a government which had dedicated itself totally to destroying not just Christian faith, but every sort of transcendental belief, every tiny flicker of a transcendental idea (sixty years of that in operation). [...] So contrary to what might be expected, this fantastic steamroller trying to destroy every trace of Christian faith has failed. All the efforts of the most powerful government that's ever existed in the world, in the sense of taking to itself the most power over its citizenry, have been unable to shape these people into the sort of citizens it wants them to be. Of all the signs of our times, this is the one that should rejoice the heart of any Christian most, and for that matter of anyone who loves the true creativity of our mortal existence. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

The anarchists cannot consider, like the collectivists, that a remuneration which would be proportionate to the hours of labour spent by each person in the production of riches may be an ideal, or even an approach to an ideal, society. Without entering here into a discussion as to how far the exchange value of each merchandise is really measured now by the amount of labour necessary for its production - a separate study must be devoted to the subject - we must say that the collectivist ideal seems to us merely unrealizable in a society which has been brought to consider the necessaries for production as a common property. Such a society would be compelled to abandon the wage-system altogether. It appears impossible that the mitigated individualism of the collectivist school could co-exist with the partial communism implied by holding land and machinery in common - unless imposed by a powerful government, much more powerful than all those of our own times. The present wage-system has grown up from the appropriation of the necessaries for production by the few; it was a necessary condition for the growth of the present capitalist production; and it cannot outlive it, even if an attempt be made to pay to the worker the full value of his produce, and hours-of-labour-checks be substituted for money. Common possession of the necessaries for production implies the common enjoyment of the fruits of the common production; and we consider that an equitable organization of society can o ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

I consider the domestic virtue of the Americans as the principle source of all their other qualities. It acts as a promoter of industry, as a stimulus to enterprise and as the most powerful restraint of public vice ... No government could be established on the same principle as that of the United States with a different code of morals. ~ Francis Grund

Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government? ~ Walter E. Williams

Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, "in government, the scum rises to the top". ~ Walter E. Williams

We both are a pejorative - liberals. Spartak, I believe an active and powerful government is the only counterbalance against rapacious business interests, unprincipled individuals and groups often all too willing to deceive, poison, and ruin in the name of their own liberty. Without us, the powerful face no limits, no scrutiny, pay no price and never face justice. My life's work is to return integrity and influence to the public sphere. I wear barronial scorn with pride." He shook his head. "Of course most people think I'm a fool."

U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Washington
Speaking to his niece and then Spartak Jones in a restaurant named after author Ayn Rand, San Francisco, in the year 2115
The Chronicles of Spartak - Rising Son, a novel ~ Steven A. Coulter

We are entering an era in which national government, instead of directing, enables powerful regional and local initiatives to work, where Britain becomes as it should be - a Britain of nations and regions ~ Gordon Brown

States are violent institutions. The government of any country, including ours, represents some sort of domestic power structure, and it's usually violent. States are violent to the extent that they're powerful, that's roughly accurate. ~ Noam Chomsky

As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful, and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government. ~ Dave Barry

My supporters and family have limited resources, very limited resources; but the FBI has the unlimited resources of the most powerful government in the world today. It's amazing that they haven't successfully had me assassinated since I have been in here. There have been plots uncovered in the past that I know of to have me killed. ~ Leonard Peltier

They need to review this secret world. We have an incredibly powerful government that gets on automatic pilot. ~ Bob Woodward

As government regulations grow slowly, we become used to the harness. Habit is a powerful force, and we no longer feel as intensely as we once would have [the] constriction of our liberties that would have been utterly intolerable a mere half century ago. ~ Robert Bork

These international bankers and Rockefeller Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

No matter how big and powerful government gets, and the many services it provides, it can never take the place of volunteers. ~ Ronald Reagan

We have two programs dealing with bulletproof vests, two different systems of actually distributing bulletproof vests from the federal government. Two sets of applications, two different sets of personnel to approve those applications. ~ James Lankford

[The Bytyqi Brothers were] American citizens and we have been seeking answers to why no one's been held accountable for these atrocities. [Family members] expect our government to do everything we can. ~ Ben Cardin

The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine ... a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them. ~ Conor Cruise O'Brien

Income inequality has no necessary connection with poverty, the lack of material resources for a decent life, such as adequate food, shelter, and clothing. A society with great income inequality may have no poor people, and a society with no income inequality may have nothing but poor people. ~ Robert Higgs

Neither mislead nor misguide. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Just think of what Woodrow Wilson stood for: he stood for world government. He wanted an early United Nations, League of Nations. But it was the conservatives, Republicans, that stood up against him. ~ Ron Paul

The Pope would have an easier job than the President of the United States in adopting a change of course. He has no Congress alongside him as a legislative body nor a Supreme Court as a judiciary. He is absolute head of government, legislator and supreme judge in the church. If he wanted to, he could authorize contraception over night, permit the marriage of priests, make possible the ordination of women and allow eucharistic fellowship with this Protestant churches. What would a Pope do who acted in the spirit of Obama? ~ Hans Kung

Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision. ~ Peter Senge

A government of the people, a democracy, has room for peaceful civil disobedience - a practice that appeals to the humanity and sense of justice of the opposition (not defined as the 'enemy') and insists that we do all, in fact, belong to the beloved community. ~ Diane Kalen-Sukra

a technique called "failure mode and effect analysis" (FMEA), a precursor to the premortem that has been used for decades in the military and government. ~ Chip Heath

Spill-what's the deal with Hottie McDreamMan?"
"Sage?" I laughed.
"No, I mean Minister Sanders." She threw a pillow at me. "Of course I mean Sage! He's the one, right? The guy from your dreams. Oh my God-he's real and he's hot! Does he kiss as well in real life as he did in your dreams?"
"I wouldn't know," I admitted. "We haven't kissed."
"What are you waiting for?"
"So the whole randomly-popping-up-in-pictures thing doesn't bother you?"
"Nope."
"The whole strange-cultists-chasing-after-him? That doesn't bother you either?"
"Nobody's perfect, Clea."
"How about if I told you he might be a serial killer? Would that bother you?"
"Debatable. Elaborate."
I told her about the nightmares and about what I'd seen in his house. As I unrolled the story, her expression went from flip and giddy to openmouthed and riveted.
"Oh my God, Clea."
"Crazy, right? And I still have no idea how he got into all those pictures."
"That part's easy."
"Really?"
"Of course," she said. "You're soulmates.
"Rayna…"
"Fine, I know, you don't like that word. But you can't possibly deny that you have a deep, powerful soul connection. By definition you have that. You said yourself, he found you in four different countries and four different times. Out of all the people in the world at any given time, he found you. The only possible way he could have done that is if your souls were connected. He's a soul-seeking missile."
Hilary Duff

The smaller the number and the more permanent and conspicuous the station of men in power, the stronger must be the interest which they will individually feel in whatever concerns the government. ~ James Madison

Jesus himself, and most of the message of the Gospels, is a message of service to the poor, a critique of the rich and the powerful, and a pacifist doctrine. And it remained that way, that's what Christianity was up ... until Constantine. :Constantine shifted it so the cross, which was the symbol of persecution of somebody working for the poor, was put on the shield of the Roman Empire. It became the symbol for violence and oppression, and that's pretty much what the church has been until the present. ~ Noam Chomsky

Don't be afraid when you have to pray fervently because of your circumstances. God is wanting to do something great through you! ~ Stormie O'martian

. Myth and superstition cannot compete with science on the platforms of reason and facts. But on the platform of fear mongering, science is nowhere near as powerful a tool as to what amounts to historically as the most effective marketing strategy of all time. ~ Al Stefanelli

You know, the primary process itself is very confusing. But in the end, I guess I believe what Winston Churchill said, which is that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. And that phrase of his, which I always have previously thought to be kind of acute, more recently I've thought of it in this way, to say well, you know what, he's also saying it's the worst form of government - except for all of the others. ~ Geoffrey Cowan

Our job is not to amuse our readers. Our mission is to stir them, inform and inflame them. Our task is to continually hold up our government and our leaders to clear-eyed analysis, unaffected by professional spinmeisters and agenda-pushers. In these times, when those of us who are members of the 'reality-based community' are under relentless attack from both the right and the left, we must encourage, and our work must reflect, independent and non-ideological thinking. ~ Tony Auth

There is only one government in the Philippines and that is how it will stay, ~ Joseph Estrada

People everywhere do not concern themselves much beyond the common round of everyday, and this is the chief problem for a democratic government, whose success depends upon an informed and responsible citizenry. ~ Pearl S. Buck

As everyone in Louisiana knows, there was often no communication or coordination between the state and federal government in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. ~ Bobby Jindal

The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law. - Romeo ~ William Shakespeare

When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before. ~ H.L. Mencken

The best government in the world, the best religion, the best traditions of any people, depend upon the good or evil of the men and women who administer them. ~ Pearl S. Buck

Nonsense!" growled the Wolf. "I tell you that it is all the fault of the Government, and if you don't believe me I shall eat you." The Wolf had a thoroughly practical mind, and was never at a loss for a good argument. ~ Oscar Wilde

Dear Black Girls and Black Women… WE matter. Our presence matters, our voices matter, and our votes matter. Make no mistake about it… WE ARE POWERFUL. We disrupt the norm and change the system for the betterment of ALL people. ~ Stephanie Lahart

You can't get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV. ~ David Hare

Of all Americans who have appeared on the nation's postage stamps, Ayn Rand is probably the only one to have thought that the United States government has no business delivering mail. ~ Thomas Mallon

Photography can still be used to champion activism and change. I believe this, even while standing in the cool winds of postmodernism ... Postmodernism looked radical, but it wasn't. As a movement it was profoundly liberal and became a victim of itself. Precisely at this historical moment, when multicultural democracy is the order of the day, photography can be used as a powerful weapon toward instituting political and cultural change. I for one will continue to work toward this end. ~ Carrie Mae Weems

The best way to guarantee you have a job tomorrow is to not finish all the work your boss asked of you today. Wait, that's not right. Sorry, I'm thinking like a government employee again. ~ Jarod Kintz

Becoming a strategic thinker is about opening your mind to possibilities. It's about seeing the bigger picture. It's about understanding the various parts of your business, taking them apart, and then putting them back together again in a more powerful way. It's about insight, invention, emotion and imagination focused on reshaping some part of the world. ~ Max McKeown

We are a nation of laws with respect and recognition of the rule of law. We are not an imperialist government with a monarch abiding by the rule of one man. ~ Marsha Blackburn

Protect and Survive ~ UK Government

Change marriage and you change the world. Convince people that government, not God, lays down the rules for marriage, and they will believe more strongly that they determine right and wrong, that not even the world's rulers are subject to a higher authority. ~ R.C. Sproul

The government needs to help those in need, but members of Congress shouldn't take advantage of the situation and use a national tragedy as an opportunity to spend taxpayer dollars on their pet projects. ~ Chris Chocola

The maxims for success laid out by the powerful are never much good as guides for those who aren't powerful. ~ Elizabeth Janeway

The only thing growing faster than the federal government's deficit is Chris Matthews' man-crush on Barack Obama. ~ Tim Pawlenty

Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces? ~ Frederic Bastiat

It is the lawyers who run our civilization for us
our governments, our business, our private lives. Most legislators are lawyers; they make our laws. Most presidents, governors, commissioners, along with their advisers and brain-trusters are lawyers; they administer our laws. All the judges are lawyers; they interpret and enforce our laws. There is no separation of powers where the lawyers are concerned. There is only a concentration of all government power
in the lawyers. ~ Fred Rodell

I think LEGOs are one of the best toys ever developed. ~ Adam Savage

Darks drifts covered the horizon. A strange shadow approaching nearer and nearer, was spreading little by little over men, over things, over ideas; a shadow which came from indignations and from systems. All that had been hurriedly stifled was stirring and fermenting. Sometimes the conscious of the honest man caught its breath, there was so much confusion in that air in which sophisms were mingled with truths. Minds trembled in the social anxiety like leaves at the approach of the storm. The electric tension was so great that at certain moments any chance-comer, thought unknown, flashed out. Then the twilight darkness fell again. At intervals, deep and sullen mutterings enabled men to judge of the amount of lightning in the cloud. ~ Victor Hugo

Whenever the government is involved, there is an element of coercion. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

If I had a weak ego, and doubts about this, the first genome would not yet have been completed with US and UK government funding. ~ Craig Venter