Government Quotes - Page 387

Actually we're not hearing a lot about gas prices right now from constituents. And I think that reflects a growing understanding on the part of the public, that there really is very little that the government and politicians can do.

Everyone wants to be called an outsider so I'm a proud insider. If I was young I'd be in my parents' house shutting down the government on my computer. The new delinquent is the hacker.

Shutting down governments on your computer is just as much as fun as going to a riot at Yale.

If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that.

If the government wants to stimulate the economy, it should outlaw gambling

Legalized gambling cost taxpayers $3 for every $1 in state revenue to government

When governments legalize and encourage gambling, they are creating addictions among their citizens

Why does one never hear of government funding for the preservation and encouragement of comic strips, girlie magazines and TV soap operas? Because these genres still hold the audience they were created to amuse and instruct.

The essence of government is concern for the widest possible public interest; the essence of the humanities, it seems to me, is private study, thought, and passion. Publicity is a essential to the one as privacy is to the other.

Government money in the arts, I fear, can only deflect artists from their responsibility to find an authentic market for their products.

If governments encourage people to become more spiritual there will be a reduction in healthcare costs.

Constitutions are violated, and it would be absurd to expect the federal government to enforce the Constitution against itself. If the very federal judges the Constitution was partly intended to restrain were the ones exclusively charged with enforcing it, then "America possesses only the effigy of a Constitution." The states, the very constituents of the Union, had to do the enforcing.

In the creation of the federal government, the states exercised the highest act of sovereignty, and they may, if they please, repeat the proof of their sovereignty, by its annihilation. But the union possesses no innate sovereignty, like the states; it was not self-constitute d; it is conventional, and of course subordinate to the sovereignties by which it was formed.

The United States is no more a Christian nation because most of its citizens are Christians than it is a 'white' nation because most of its citizens are white. We are Americans because we practice democracy and believe in republican government, not because we practice revealed religion and believe in Bible-based government.

Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government.

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.

Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.

A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it. They are more or less unfit for liberty; and although it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it

In a really equal democracy, every or any section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportionately. ... Unless they are, there is not equal government, but a government of inequality and privilege: one part of the people rule over the rest: there is a part whose fair and equal share of influence in the representation is withheld from them, contrary to all just government, but, above all, contrary to the principle of democracy, which professes equality as its very root and foundation.

A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination.

In vain shall Great Britain confer upon her colonies the free government and liberal principles of legislation, for which she is distinguished, if she do not carry with her the revelations of God.

I had to watch government fail for 25 years doing consumer reporting before I really saw it because intuitively, the reaction is problem, bring government and government will make it better.

[T]he only way to shrink the trade deficit is for the government to prohibit us from buying whatever we want.

The Community Relations Service would be another pro-civil rights Federal agency attempting to make people do what the policy of the Federal Government demanded that they do. Moreover, in title II of the bill, this Service is made an agent of the court without due thought as to the effect on legal and judicial procedures.

Our government is a gift from God, who calls us to be good stewards of it.