U S Government Quotes

The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at no cost. ~ Ben Bernanke

not only did foil fail to block radio waves, it actually amplified certain frequencies - notably frequency bands allocated to the U.S. government for GPS communications. ~ Rob Brotherton

The murderers of the three Bytyqi brothers, New York residents who were executed by Serbian Ministry of Interior personnel in 1999, have never been prosecuted. The U.S. government cannot accept that the murderers of three of its citizens go unpunished. ~ Michael Kirby

Just as Hitler used the Reichstag burning, the U.S. government now uses the so-called two wars, the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism, to fuel fear in the population and establish a police security state. ~ Ralph Metzner

The U.S. government has in recent years fought what it termed wars against AIDs, drug abuse, poverty, illiteracy and terrorism. Each of those wars has budgets, legislation, offices, officials, letterhead - everything necessary in a bureaucracy to tell you something is real. ~ Bruce Jackson

Whether or not the U.S. government funds circumvention tools, or who exactly it funds and with what amount, it is clear that Internet users in China and elsewhere are seeking out and creating their own ad hoc solutions to access the uncensored global Internet. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

New York City is finished," he said. "They can't keep order there, and you can't have business without order. It'll take a hundred years to sort things out and get it all going again."
"What do you hear of the U.S. government? I said. "We don't have electricity an hour a month anymore and there's nothing on the air but the preachers anyway."
"Well, I hear that this Harvey Albright pretends to be running things out of Minneapolis now. It was Chicago, but that may have gone by the boards. Congress hasn't met since twelve twenty-one." Ricketts said, using a common shorthand for the destruction of Washington a few days before Christmas some years back. "We're still fighting skirmishes with Mexico. The Everglades are drowning. Trade is becoming next to impossible, from everything I can tell, and business here is drying up. It all seems like a bad dream. The future sure isn't what it used to be, is it?"
"We believe in the future, sir. Only it's not like the world we've left behind," Joseph said.
"How's that?"
"We're building our own New Jerusalem up the river. it's a world made by hand, now, one stone at a time, one board at a time, one hope at a time, one soul at a time. . . ~ James Howard Kunstler

But the U.S. government bets its last penny on violence as the magic solution for every problem, and so the country is losing friends every day and doesn't seem to give a damn about it. ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi

The Tunisian blogger and activist Sami Ben Gharbia has written passionately about how U.S. government involvement in grassroots digital spaces can endanger those who are already vulnerable to accusations by nasty regimes of acting as foreign agents. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency. ~ Sam Harris

I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building. ~ Edward Snowden

We should not have the U.S. government buying stock in American industries - the financial industry or any other industry. ~ Rand Paul

Laws and regulations are supposed to restrict the kind of surveillance governments do. In fact, the U.S. government is quite restricted in what kind of surveillance they can do on U.S. citizens. The problem is that 96 percent of the planet is not U.S. citizens. ~ Mikko Hypponen

Whole villages of Muslims had been hacked to pieces by drunken Christian youth, and as foreigners, we should have been pulled out by the organization. But the U.S. government supported the Christian tribes, just as the French had all through the colonial days, and to pull us out would have meant admitting that things weren't as stable for their puppet government as the western companies, trading in Ivory Coast for cocoa, rubber, and timber, and selling Coke and cigarettes, wanted to hear. ~ Tony D'Souza

You're too straight, you just don't understand these guys' priorities. They don't expect any law or justice from the U.S. government. They don't even expect the government to be sane. The whole federal system just detached itself from them and floated off into deep space. They think of the government as something like bad weather. It's something you just endure. ~ Bruce Sterling

Yes, I am a terrorist, and proud of it as long as it is against the U.S. government and against Israel, because you are more than terrorists; you are the one who invented terrorism and using it every day. You are butchers, liars and hypocrites. ~ Ramzi Yousef

The Government goes after the little guys, not their own. ~ Kenneth Eade

We want a president who is as much like an American tourist as possible. Someone with the same goofy grin, the same innocent intentions, the same naive trust; a president with no conception of foreign policy and no discernible connection to the U.S. government, whose Nice Guyism will narrow the gap between the U.S. and us until nobody can tell the difference. ~ Florence King

When the U.K. or U.S. government issues bonds to fund a deficit, the buyers are not solely in the U.K. or the U.S. - they're in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Investment banks provide direct access to these buyers. ~ Bob Diamond

And if Americans are willing to stand for what they believe in, I also expect public opinion to compel the U.S. government to open a torture and war crimes investigation. ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi

If the government wants to do social policy, it should not be done in a quasi-public company. If you have a mortgage guarantee company which is done by the U.S. government, it should be guaranteed by the originators, i.e., the shareholder. ~ Jamie Dimon

Manhattan Community College had not one course on Peurto Rican history. The Peurto Rican sisters and brothers who knew what was happening became our teachers ... once you understand something about the history of a people, their heroes, their hardships, and their sacrifices, it's easier to struggle with them. To support their struggle. For a lot of peole in this country, people who live in other places have no faces. And this is the way the U.S. government wants it to be. They figure as long as the people have no faces and the country has no form, amerikans will not protest when they send in the marines to wipe them out. ~ Assata Shakur

I'm trying to fight the terrorism that's actually causing the other forms of terrorism. You know, the root cause of terrorism is the stuff that the U.S. government allows to happen, and the foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists. And it's easy for us because it's just some oil. ~ Lupe Fiasco

Cubans understand that theirs is a country that provides sanctuary for people fleeing oppression. As a nation, they are very proud of this stance. They don't care how much the U.S. government badgers or attacks them. ~ Assata Shakur

Let us admit that we have attended parties where for one brief night a republic of gratified desires was attained. Shall we not confess that the politics of that night have more reality and force for us than those of, say, the entire U.S. Government? Some of the "parties" we've mentioned lasted for two or three years. Is this something worth imagining, worth fighting for? Let us study invisibility, webworking, psychic nomadism
and who knows what we might attain? ~ Hakim Bey

Prison is quite literally a ghetto in the most classic sense of the world, a place where the U.S. government now puts not only the dangerous but also the inconvenient - people who are mentally ill, people who are addicts, people who are poor and uneducated and unskilled. ~ Piper Kerman

Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest. ~ Edward Snowden

Protected businesses never, never become competitive ... Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons, KPMG, RTI, Blackwater and all other U.S. corporations that were in Iraq to take advantage of the reconstruction were part of a vast protectionist racket whereby the U.S. government had created their markets with war, barred their competitors from even entering the race, then paid them to do the work, while guaranteeing them a profit to boot - all at taxpayer expense. ~ Naomi Klein

I've never understood America,"said the king.
"Neither do we, sir. You might say we have two governments, kind of overlapping. First we have the elected government. It's Democratic or Republican, doesn't make much difference, and then there's corporation government."
"They get along together, these governments?"
"Sometimes," said Tod. "I don't understand it myself. You see, the elected government pretends to be democratic, and actually it is autocratic. The corporation governments pretend to be autocratic and they're all the time accusing the others of socialism. They hate socialism."
"So I have heard," said Pippin.
"Well, here's the funny thing, sir. You take a big corporation in America, say like General Motors or Du Pont or U.S. Steel. The thing they're most afraid of is socialism, and at the same time they themselves are socialist states."
The king sat bolt upright. "Please?" he said.
"Well, just look at it, sir. They've got medical care for employees and their families and accident insurance and retirement pensions, paid vacations -- even vacation places -- and they're beginning to get guaranteed pay over the year. The employees have representation in pretty nearly everything, even the color they paint the factories. As a matter of fact, they've got socialism that makes the USSR look silly. Our corporations make the U.S. Government seem like an absolute monarchy. Why, if the U.S. government tried to do one-tenth of what General Motors d ~ John Steinbeck

I cannot bring myself to judge those who are defending their lands against an immoral violent foreign invader. The fact that the immoral violent foreign invader happens to be the U.S. government does not alter my view. ~ Dave Champion

It is true that authoritarian governments increasingly see the Internet as a threat in part because they see the U.S. government behind the Internet. ~ Evgeny Morozov

There's a lot of work being done through the innovation arm of the World Bank, at the World Bank Institute. There's a lot of work that we at the Rockefeller Foundation are doing and funding towards that end, and increasingly, the U.S. government is getting engaged. ~ Judith Rodin

You cannot win a war if you cannot talk honestly about the enemy Since the 9/11 attacks, political correctness and ideological prejudice - under both Republican and Democratic presidents - have distorted our analysis of the enemy, preventing us from drawing an effective plan to defeat the likes of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The Obama administration, blinded by its own preconceived ideas of why terrorism occurs, is influenced by malevolent actors who have an interest in censoring any talk of the religious aspects of the enemy's ideology. At the highest level of the U.S. government, terrorism is deemed to be the result of poverty, unemployment, and lack of political enfranchisement. This fallacy must be jettisoned. We are not at war with Islam. The people most immanently in danger, in fact, are the nonviolent and non-extremist Muslims of the Middle East, such as our allies in Jordan and the modern Muslims of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. They are on the most important front of this war, and they understand just how much religion truly matters. We do a great disservice to those brave Muslims when we try to convince the world that the threat will disappear if enough people have good jobs and sound educations. ~ Sebastian Gorka

She wanted to tell him everything: that her worst fears had come true, that her husband had managed to place a surveillance device into her mind, the whole story. But she didn't want to seem crazy. This was shitty because the truth was crazy, not her. There had been a tagline of a TV show, 'The truth is out there,' that Hazel had initially misinterpreted and felt comforted by. 'That is for sure!' she'd thought, the truth was the most far-out thing possible. Hazel had always felt this--when she learned about periods and sex, when she learned about death, when she learned about the impossible living conditions of the other planets in the solar system and the manufacturing of processed meats. Almost always, the truth was way more bizarre and gross than she would've imagined. Then one night she commented on this to a friend and was told, 'No, dumbass, the show is saying that the truth will be discovered. Like how aliens are real and the U.S. government knows it. ~ Alissa Nutting

One of the few things my father says when he's had a few that I agree with is that kids don't have much balls in this generation. Some of them are trying to start the revolution by bombing U.S. government washrooms, but none of them are throwing Molotov cocktails at the Pentagon. ~ Stephen King

Snowden has enough [sic] information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had. The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare. ~ Glenn Greenwald

Increasingly, the Chinese will own a lot more of the world because they will be converting their dollar reserves and U.S. government bonds into real assets. ~ George Soros

The City of London has never been known for understanding technology and has never matched Silicon Valley's tradition of knowledgeable investment in technology start-ups, just as the U.K. government has never matched the vast investment made by the U.S. government. ~ Geoff Mulgan

Expose the Jesuit order and learn about the global genocide. Speak out, even when what you have to say is not popular. ~ John Reynaga

Lefever describes his financing plan with modesty:
"'Our detailed budget is realistic, but does not take into account the inflation that may occur before September 1983. The one place it could cut or reduce is item 7, the simultaneous interpreter services, if these services could be provided gratis by the U.S. government.'"
"In other words, the only way to make a saving on a U.S.-subsidized project is to take money out of another U.S.-subsidized column. ~ Christopher Hitchens

During that time period all of our tribes were suffering extremely from poverty and neglect. And the reason I say neglect is because the U.S. Government was neglecting its true responsibilities they agreed to in exchange for our land and resources. What I and others attempted to do, and in essence we did, was bring attention to our sovereign rights, the rights we had retained when the treaties were made. ~ Leonard Peltier

The U.S. government has been preoccupied with health care 'reform,' but this refers to improving access and insurance coverage and has little or nothing to do with innovation. ~ Eric Topol

It is hard to realize today that "government" during the American Civil War a hundred years ago meant the merest handful of people. Lincoln's Secretary of War had fewer than fifty civilian subordinates, most of them not "executives" and policy-makers but telegraph clerks. The entire Washington establishment of the U.S. government in Theodore Roosevelt's time, around 1900, could be comfortably housed in any one of the government buildings along the Mall today. ~ Peter F. Drucker

The U.S. government officials lie when they talk about human rights. They're a bunch of hypocrites and liars.
You can't take it seriously. ~ Eqbal Ahmad

The clever, albeit fragile, coalition against terrorism brought together by the U.S. government might be able to advance the transition from classical international law to a cosmopolitan order. ~ Jurgen Habermas

Very few people realize that the U.S. government does not have the power to order the recall of contaminated meat. ~ Eric Schlosser

I stand with the Navajo Nation and call upon the U.S. Government to do what is right and clean up this mess. ~ Erin Brockovich

Liability limit has become a symbol of corporate greed in passing the risk of disaster to the U.S. government and U.S. citizens. ~ Marvin Ammori

The U.S. government spends billions of dollars on disasters after they happen, but it pinches pennies when it comes to preparing for them. ~ Deborah Blum

I was ecstatic they re-named 'French Fries' as 'Freedom Fries'. Grown men and women in positions of power in the U.S. government showing themselves as idiots. ~ Johnny Depp

When I was fifteen, I used to run around reading 'Adbusters' and dumpster diving, trying to find ways to make the U.S. government unwind into chaos through hardcore punk and metal. ~ Diplo

As a CEO of a large company, clearly we need policies in the U.S. government that are pro-business, because at the end of the day, we all work within the framework of a country's policies. ~ Indra Nooyi

The core distortion of the War on Terror under both Bush and Obama is the Orwellian practice of equating government accusations of terrorism with proof of guilt. One constantly hears U.S. government defenders referring to 'terrorists' when what they actually mean is: those accused by the government of terrorism. ~ Glenn Greenwald

By today's standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum. His actual impact on their personal lives was trivial. He had arbitrary power over them in law and in principle but in fact it was seldom exercised. If you compare his rule with that of today's U.S. Government you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence.. ~ Joseph Sobran

What exactly was the role of the U.S. government in the coup that overthrew Ngo Dinh Diem?" Trumbull stared for a moment at Foley's rigid back. Then he said to Patchen, "Tell him." "I think you already know, Paul," Patchen said. "In simple terms, we countenanced it. We knew it was being planned. We offered advice. We provided support. We encouraged the plot. We welcomed the results. ~ Charles McCarry

Even before September 11, there was a debate in the administration about whether or not military force should be used to oust Saddam Hussein. You're not going to find one person in the top echelons of the foreign policy and national security establishment in the U.S. government who's going to say that Saddam Hussein should not be out of power. ~ Elaine Sciolino

[The U.S. government] was tired of treaties. They were tired of sacred hills. They were tired of ghost dances. And they were tired of all the inconveniences of the Sioux. So they brought out their cannons. 'You want to be an Indian now?' they said, finger on the trigger. ~ Aaron Huey

by considering what has happened in East Timor since 1975, we can learn some important things about ourselves, our society, and our institutions. If we do not like what we find when we look at the facts - and few will fail to be appalled if they take an honest look - we can work to bring about changes in the practices and structure of institutions that cause terrible suffering and slaughter. To the extent that we see ourselves as citizens in a democratic community, we have a responsibility to devote our energies to these ends. The recent history of Timor provides a revealing insight into the policies of the U.S. government, ~ Noam Chomsky

And just when we were at the end of our design process there was the news that the Italian government and the U.S. government had signed an agreement to fly the first Italian astronaut on that flight. ~ Umberto Guidoni

The U.S. doesn't recognize the laws of Cuba. They can kidnap anybody and bring them back to the States to face the so-called justice system. There's no telling what the U.S. government will do to me. I'm in constant danger; I guess I've gotten used to it. ~ Assata Shakur

People ask me if I miss the States. I miss African Americans. But not the U.S. government or all the things they put me through. I miss African American culture, our speech, dance and cooking. ~ Assata Shakur

How, voters will ask, can we cover 50 million new people without any new doctors or nurses? The answer is to ration health care, with the U.S. government deciding whom will get hip and knee replacements, heart bypass surgery and all manner of medical treatments. And what does rationing mean? It means that the elderly will be denied care, which they can now get whenever they want it. ~ Dick Morris

My pacifism came after I joined the army and was shipped over to Korea. There was a little one-room orphanage there called Song-do. There were 180 babies in there, and they were GI babies. The U.S. government would not acknowledge this, and the Korean government had nothing to do with them. They were living on a 100-pound bag of rice a month. Some of those kids, when they were old enough, would go out and shine shoes. They would show up at the gate of our compound to shine shoes, and you'd swear they were looking for their fathers. ~ Utah Phillips

U.S. Government propaganda tries to give the impression that aerial bombardment achieves near-surgical accuracy, so that military targets can be destroyed with minimal effect on civilians. Technical documents give a different picture. ~ Noam Chomsky

We've supported the U.S. every step of the way. The Philippines was the first government in Asia after September 11, in fact, the night of September 11; it was nighttime for us then. It was daytime here. We were the first government in Asia to come out and say that we're supporting the U.S. ~ Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month. ~ Andrew Bacevich

In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It's a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez's many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez's direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical. ~ Naomi Klein

There isn't much question that the person who obtained the WikiLeaks cables from a classified U.S. government network broke U.S. law and should expect to face the consequences. The legal rights of a website that publishes material acquired from that person, however, are much more controversial. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. ~ Ben Bernanke

We know with certainty that the Obama administration has re-defined 'militants' to include any military-age males they kill regardless of whether they were actually doing anything wrong. We know with certainty that the U.S. Government has detained and publicly branded as 'terrorists' people they knew at the time were innocent. ~ Glenn Greenwald

I never would have believed as a candidate for the U.S. Senate that the U.S. government could buy GM without a hearing, with no vote, yes or no. There are billions and billions of dollars at stake here. ~ Mike Johanns

You know if the U.S. Government wanted to boost the economy there's a simple solution make Black Friday the refund date for your state and federal taxes ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Gene patents are the point of greatest concern in the debate over ownership of human biological materials, and how that ownership might interfere with science. As of 2005 - the most recent year figures were available - the U.S. government had issued patents relating to the use of about 20 percent of known human genes, including genes for Alzheimer's, asthma, colon cancer, and, most famously, breast cancer. This means pharmaceutical companies, scientists, and universities control what research can be done on those genes, and how much resulting therapies and diagnostic tests will cost. And some enforce their patents aggressively: Myriad Genetics, which holds the patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes responsible for most cases of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, charges $3,000 to test for the genes. Myriad has been accused of creating a monopoly, since no one else can offer the test, and researchers can't develop cheaper tests or new therapies without getting permission from Myriad and paying steep licensing fees. Scientists who've gone ahead with research involving the breast-cancer genes without Myriad's permission have found themselves on the receiving end of cease-and-desist letters and threats of litigation. ~ Rebecca Skloot

If the U.S. government and nonprofit organizations, private corporations and university laboratories are going to dedicate money and time to the future, they also need to do so for the present. They need to fund accessible buses, schools, classrooms, movie theaters, restrooms, housing, and workplaces. They should support campaigns to end bullying, employment discrimination, social isolation, and the ongoing institutionalizing of disabled people with the same enthusiasm with which they implement cure research. I want money for accessible playgrounds, tree houses, and sandboxes so that wheelchair-using kids aren't left twiddling their thumbs in the present while they dream of running in the future.

If we choose to wait for those always-just-around-the-corner cures, lavishing them with resources, energy, and media attention, we risk suspending our present-day lives. ~ Eli Clare

Once again no one in the U.S. government had made any public statement either supporting the trial or criticizing the Hitler regime. The question remained: what was everyone afraid of? ~ Erik Larson

I argue that a right of exit is important in order to limit government power. I sometimes think that what kept the U.S. government small in the early 19th century was not so much the Constitution as the fact that people kept leaving the then-current United States for adjacent territories. The option to exit would have made it quite difficult for government to grow large and intrusive. ~ Arnold Kling

Snowden has yet to tell me anything that was a fact that I have been able to rebut or that anybody in the U.S. government I have talked to has been able to rebut. ~ Barton Gellman

In Latin America, in the past, it was almost impossible to guarantee democracy. There were military dictatorships, and nowadays there are not so many military dictatorships. Although we have a dictator in Honduras, as a result of a coup, now as a president, he is almost the only one I would say. But again led or managed, gestated by the U.S. government. ~ Evo Morales

The U.S. government engages with many countries around the world in official dialogues on human rights. ~ Samantha Power

I believe we need a more opportunistic and democratic approach to lunar exploration, now that we're shifting from U.S. government-sponsored space exploration to private expeditions. ~ Naveen Jain

The U.S. government has known since the early 1990s about Soviet-era smallpox weapons, and collected circumstantial evidence of programs elsewhere. ~ Barton Gellman

The Catholic community, with many others, has long worked for this new commitment on global health and debt relief (President George W. Bushs proposed $15 billion Global AIDS initiative). I hope that Congress will now appropriate the money needed to make this legislation a reality, and that the U.S. government will press for strengthening the debt relief program along the lines proposed by this legislation. ~ John Ricard

Hollywood's martyr-mythology leaves out the fact that the famed Hollywood Ten, for example, were in fact members of the Communist Party, which advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government in violation of the Smith Act and which took orders directly from Moscow. ~ Jonah Goldberg

When I resigned, I put the U.S. Government on notice that I'm going to stick to policy issues, that I have no intention of going out and blowing the cover off of the intelligence operations, that those are truly sensitive and they should not be exposed. ~ Scott Ritter

When the U.S. government is serious about doing something that's complicated and difficult, it can do it. ~ Charles Ferguson

I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

The people of Nicaragua were suffering oppression. This made us develop an awareness which eventually led us to commit ourselves to the struggle against the domination of the capitalists of our country in collusion with the U.S. government, i.e. imperialism. ~ Daniel Ortega

Apologists for activist government never tire of telling us that the
benevolent state is our protector and that without it wed be at the mercy of
monsters. It is about time that we understood that the U.S. government does
more to endanger the American people than any imagined monsters around the
world ... by pursuing its Grand Foreign Policy of meddling anywhere and
everywhere. ~ Sheldon Richman

It used to be almost the first question (just after 'Can you type?') in the standard female job interview: 'Are you now, or have you ever, contemplated marriage, motherhood, or the violent overthrow of the U.S. government? ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

The Brotherhood's campaign to intimidate and silence officials in Washington who link Islam and terrorism is working brilliantly. The 9/11 Commission Report used the word jihad 126 times, Muslim 145 times, and Islam 322 times. A decade later, they have been virtually banished from official U.S. government documents. The FBI's Counterterrorism Analytical Lexicon and the 2009 National Intelligence Strategy have zero mentions of jihad, Muslim, or Islam. Instead, they refer to "violent extremism" in general. ~ Glenn Beck

We're a country of rule of law, and rule of law doesn't move fast, especially in an entity as big the U.S. government. ~ Sherrod Brown

You got any experience? (Carlos)
I'm former army intelligence, Special Forces, on contract to the U.S. government now for national security. That good enough for you, amigo? (Stoner)
It'll do. (Carlos) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

You missed that I'm a computer specialist, and I know that the U.S. government would have no problem forging a passport for me," he said. The interrogators quickly took the passport back and never talked about it again. Scenarios like that made me very paranoid about the government making up something about me. ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Companies made these decisions about encryption when they were finding it very difficult to sell their products overseas because the [Edward] Snowden disclosures created the impression that the U.S. government was inside this hardware and software produced by them. They needed to do something to deal with the perception. ~ Michael Morell

as of April 1, 2010, the U.S. government had lost thirty-four out of forty-six habeas cases. In appeals of several of those cases, ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale. ~ John W. Gardner

If the U.S. Government was a company, the deficit would be $5 trillion because they would have to account by general accepted accounting principles. But actually they encourage government spending, reckless government spending, because the government can issue Treasury bills at extremely low interest rates. ~ Marc Faber

The adversary must first be made into a demon before people will accept the war. This was why during the Cold War, the U.S. government became infuriated at any ~ Mark Kurlansky

What is the U.S. government looking for? And the elite governing this country? They're looking for oil. ~ Hugo Chavez

If someone publishes an essay, or tells a joke, or performs a play that forwards a problematic idea the U.S. government generally wouldn't try to stop that person from doing so. Even if they could. If the expression doesn't involve national security the government generally doesn't give a shit. But, if enough vocal consumers are personally offended, they can silence that artist just as effectively. They can petition advertisers and marginalize the artist's reception and economically remove that individual from whatever platform he or she happens to utilize simply because there are no expression based platforms that don't have an economic underpinning. It's one of those situations where the practical manifestation is the opposite of the technical intention. As Americans we tend to look down on European countries that impose legal limitations on speech. Yet as long as speakers in those countries stay within the specified boundaries discourse is allowed relatively unfettered, even when it's unpopular. In the U.S., there are absolutely no speech boundaries imposed by the government. So the citizenry creates its own limitations based on the arbitrary values of whichever activist group is most successful at inflicting its worldview upon an economically fragile public sphere. As a consequence, the United States is a safe space for those who want to criticize the government, but a dangerous place for those who want to advance unpopular thoughts about any other subject that could be d ~ Chuck Klosterman