Famous Quotes & Sayings

Adam Smith

Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

Adam Smith

Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

Adam Smith

I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

Adam McKay

Blanket cynicism toward government has always existed.

Abraham Lincoln

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.

Abraham Lincoln

There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two, so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.

Abraham Lincoln

The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.

Harry Seidler

The government only makes restrictive rules, they don't show you what to do so you know, OK, here's where we need this many apartments, with open space, playgrounds, kindergartens.

It's really weird watching the government watch me.

Alexander Hamilton

It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of violent love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is too apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten, that the vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty.

Alexander Hamilton

[I]n framing a Government for a nation we ought, in those provisions which are designed to be permanent, to calculate not on temporary, but on permanent causes of expence.

Alexander Hamilton

It is in vain to hope to guard against events too mighty for human foresight or precaution, and it would be idle to object to a government because it could not perform impossibilities.

Alexander Hamilton

It will follow that that government ought to be clothed with all powers requisite to complete execution of its trust.

Alexander Hamilton

A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.

Alexander Hamilton

But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States.

Alexander Hamilton

The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation.

Alexander Hamilton

If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.

Alexander Hamilton

Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities.

Alexander Hamilton

As to Taxes, they are evidently inseparable from Government. It is impossible without them to pay the debts of the nation, to protect it from foreign danger, or to secure individuals from lawless violence and rapine.

Alexander Hamilton

It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the state governments will in all possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Let us drive away those cruel, greedy oppressors, governments, and the new ones, having just laid aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far from it.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The central government possesses no plan of finding the way out of this blind alley.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Maybe next year the government might impose some immigration rules on the academy. Two Mexicans in a row is suspicious. [On Mexican immigrants in the US] I hope they can be treated with respect of the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation.

Alberto Gonzales

There are, for example, exemptions in FOIA in which the government can withhold certain kinds of information, and the courts have recognized that there is certain documentation that do deserve protection, that certain privileges do apply and do deserve protection.

Alberto Manguel

Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.

Ben Carson

Nobody is starving on the streets. We've always taken care of them. We take care of our own; we always have. It is not the government's responsibility.

Ben Carson

I want the government to provide the military so we don't get invaded by somebody and destroyed. I want the government to provide the roads so I can get from point A to B. In terms of taking care of my day to day needs, I want to do that myself. I want my community to do that.

Tony La Russa

If the national government doesn't fix your problem, you've got a problem. You've got to fix it yourself. That's just part of the American way.

Instead of raising taxes as some would insist, we need to reduce waste and inefficiency in government.

Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj

What do you think, what people want from their governments? Simple. A better life for themselves and for their children. Government that is fair, just and responsible.

We don't like the government to tell us what to do.

We are no pariah state. This government will prove this.

Abigail Adams

The reins of government have been so long slackened, that I fear the people will not quietly submit to those restraints which are necessary for the peace and security of the community.