GOVERNMENT

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1. And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.—BURKE, Thoughts & Details on Scarcity
   

2. The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.—W. E. CHANNING, The Life & Character of Napoleon Bonaparte
   

3. The final end of Government is not to exert restraint but to do good.—RUFUS CHOATE
   

4. 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.—HENRY CLAY
   

5. I would have been glad to have lived under my woodside, and to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than to have undertaken this government.—OLIVER CROMWELL
   

6. Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.—WILL DURANT, The Story of Philosophy
   

7. The less government we have, the better—the fewer laws, and the less confided power.—EMERSON, Politics
   

8. More and more government is conceived as the biggest organized social effort for dealing with social problems. Our whole evolutionary thinking leads to the conclusion that economic independence lies at the very foundation of social and moral well-being.—JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, Law and Politics
   

9. The history of a nation's spiritual development is but the tale of its wistful groping toward the provision of a machinery of State, which shall, as nearly as may be, accord with the demand of this spirit of Equity.—GALSWORTHY
   

10. I can retain neither respect nor affection for a Government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend its immorality.—MAHATMA GANDHI
    

11. You cannot possibly have a broader basis for any government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.—W. L. GARRISON, Life
    

12. What is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.—GOETHE

13. For just experience tells, in every soil,
    That those that think must govern those that toil.—GOLDSMITH, The Traveller

14. A decent and manly examination of the acts of Government should be not only tolerated, but encouraged.—WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, Inaugural Address

15. We admit of no government by divine right. . .. the only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.—WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, Inaugural Address

16. You can't run a government solely on a business basis.—HERBERT H. LEHMAN
    

17. It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies.—LINCOLN
    

18. This government, 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 their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.—LINCOLN
    

19. No government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for
    its own termination.—LINCOLN
    

20. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.—LINCOLN
    

21. I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burden.—LINCOLN
    

22. That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.—MACAULAY, On Mitford's History of Greece
    

23. Nothing is so galling to a people, not broken in from the birth, as a paternal or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read and say and eat and drink and wear.—MACAULAY, Southey's Colloquies
    

24. There is bound to be a certain amount of trouble running any country if you are president the trouble happens to you. But if you are a tyrant you can arrange things so that most of the trouble happens to other people.—DON MARQUIS, Archys Newest Deal
    

25. There is one thing better than good government, and that is government in which all the people have a part.—W. H. PAGE, Life and Letters
    

26. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.—THOMAS PAINE
    

27. Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments.—WILLIAM PENN, Preface to Pennsylvania's Frame of Government
    

28. Oligarchy: A government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it.—PLATO, The Republic
    

29. Such is the government, such are the people.—Proverb
    

30. Rewards and punishments are the basis of good government.—Proverb
    

31. When any man ventures to scoff at the use of brains in government he should be asked to explain by what part of the anatomy he believes human affairs should be conducted.—DONALD RICHBERG
    

32. I hope that calm counsel and constructive leadership will provide the steadying influence and the time necessary for the coming of new and more practical forms of representative government throughout the world wherein privilege will occupy a lesser place and welfare a greater.—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
    

33. To do what any honest government of any country would do; to try to increase the security and the happiness of a larger number of people in all occupations of life and in all parts of the country; to give them more of the good things of life; to give them a greater distribution, not only of wealth in the narrow terms but of wealth in the wider terms: . . . to give them assurance that they are not going to starve in their old age; to give honest business a chance to go ahead and make a reasonable profit, and to give everyone a chance to earn a living.—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
    

34. No greater obligation faces the Government than to justify the faith of its young people in the fundamental rightness of our democratic institutions and to preserve their strength, loyalty and idealism against the time when they must assume the responsibilities of citizenship.—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, Letter to NYA, June 26, 1936.
    

35. Thou little thinkest what a little foolery governs the world.—JOHN SELDEN, Table Talk
    

36. They that govern the most make the least noise.—JOHN SELDEN, Table Talk
    

37. Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.—HERBERT SPENCER, Essays on Education

38. The most urgent problem of civilized mankind is to constitute effective means of governing itself where its civilization has already made its world practically one.—CLARENCE STREIT, Union Now
    

39. The power of the government is a living power, constantly changing and developing to meet new conditions and accomplish new purposes.—Opinion: U. S. Supreme Court
    

40. The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.—DANIEL WEBSTER