Quotes about Government

Democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth.

Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all to often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. "The Minister to the Valley," February 23, 1968

Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.

Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals -- that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government -- that it is not a charter _for_ government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection _against_ the government.

If the government is covering up knowledge of aliens, they are doing a better job of it than they do at anything else.

I think this is an important subject for research, but one has to be careful not to be labelled a crank. If one made a research grant application to work on time travel it would be dismissed immediately. No government agency could afford to be seen to be spending public money on anything as way out as time travel. Instead one has to use technical terms like closed time-like curves, which are code for time travel.

All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

The government can't make people love me, but it can keep them from lynching me.

A people are not made for rulers, but rulers for a people.

Government is necessary to defend communities from miseries from within themselves; from the prevalence of intestine discord, mutual injustice and violence; the members of the society continually making a prey one of another, without any defence one from another.

As government, and strong rods for the exercise of it, are necessary to preserve public societies from dreadful and fatal calamities arising from among themselves; so no less requisite are they to defend the community from foreign enemies. As they are like the pillars of a building, so they are also like the walls and bulwarks of a city: they are under God the main strength of a people in a time of war and the chief instruments of their preservation, safety and rest.