It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.
Washington is a place where politicians don't know which way is up and taxes don't know which way is down.
Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.
Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.
A corporation's primary goal is to make money. Government's primary role is to take a big chunk of that money and give it to others.
The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.
Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.
I have long believed taxpayers make better use of their money than the government ever could.
To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.
The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.
If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also.
Americans no longer look to government for economic security rather, they look to their portfolios.
Our nation is built on the bedrock principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Government alone cannot solve the problems we deal with in our correctional facilities, treatment centers, homeless shelters and crisis centers - we need our faith-based and community partners.
The mistakes made by Congress wouldn't be so bad if the next Congress didn't keep trying to correct them.
There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
Government is an unnecessary evil. Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness.
But no one has yet succeeded in reducing the size or scope of the federal government.
As a governor, I am naturally inclined to focus on the domestic side of protecting the United States.
But let us remember, at the same time, government is sacred, and not to be trifled with.
If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.