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In public affairs, stupidity is more dangerous than knavery, because it is harder to fight. – Woodrow Wilson
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Government is merely an attempt to express the conscience of everybody, the average conscience of the nation, in the rules that everybody is commanded to obey. That is all it is. – Woodrow Wilson
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I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. – Thomas Jefferson
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It is the responsibility of the citizens to support their government. It is not the responsibility of the government to support its citizens. – Grover Cleveland
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A good government implies two things; first fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained. – James Madison
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You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. – Abraham Lincoln
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Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. – John F. Kennedy
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A wise government knows how to enforce with temper, or to conciliate with dignity. – George Grenville
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Civilization and profits go hand in hand. – Calvin Coolidge
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All societies of men must be governed is some way or other. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet. – Robert Winthrop
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Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C. S. Lewis
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All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. – George Bernard Shaw
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Government is like an onion. To understand it, you have to peel through many different layers. Most outsiders never get beyond the first or second layer. – Warren Bennis
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Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few. – David Hume
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Business has three main constituencies; government has dozens. What constitutes a signal achievement in one constituency’s eyes… may be a disaster to others. – Timothy Plumtre
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In government, all of the incentive is in the direction of not making mistakes. You can have 99 successes and nobody notices, and one mistake and you’re dead. – Lou Winnick
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Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details, which must be attended to if rules have to be adapted to different men, instead of indiscriminately subjecting all men to the same rule. – De Tocqueville
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Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them. – Thomas Paine
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Much has been said about the analogy between running a business and running a government. This is a sloppy analogy from a start. If one simply substitutes ‘running a business’ on the one hand and ‘governing a parliamentary democracy’ on the other hand the falsity of the conceit is obvious. – Lord Bancroft
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Which government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. – Goethe
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Governing a large state is like boiling a small fish. – Lao-Tzu
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His administration apparently means to define itself as a television program instead of a government…I don’t know if it can please both its sponsors and its intended audience. – Lewis Lapham on the Clinton Administration
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Power corrupts, but absolute power is a blast. – Anonymously from White House staff
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I believe there’s something out there watching over us. Unfortunately, it’s the government. – Woody Allen
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Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair. – George Burns
