– Government Proverbs –
It’s every American’s duty to support his government, but not necessarily in the style to which it has become accustomed.
~ Thomas Clifford
Truth is the glue that holds government together. Compromise is the oil that makes governments go.
~ Gerald R. Ford
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.
~ Ronald Reagan
All government–indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act–is founded on compromise and barter.
~ Edmund Burke
No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
~ Author Unknown
A corporation’s primary goal is to make money. Government’s primary role is to take a big chunk of that money and give it to others.
~ Larry Ellison
Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.
~ Michael Novak
Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?
~ Will Rogers
The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.
~ W.E. Channing
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
~ H. L. Mencken
Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
~ Sydney J. Harris
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
~ John Kenneth Galbraith
Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
~ P. J. O’Rourke
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.
~ Lord Acton
Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.
~ P. J. O’Rourke
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
~ P. J. O’Rourke
If ‘pro’ is the opposite of ‘con’ what is the opposite of ‘progress’?
~ Paul Harvey
If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary; if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also.
~ Fred Woodworth
The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.
~ Woodrow Wilson
But let us remember, at the same time, government is sacred, and not to be trifled with.
~ Jonathan Mayhew
Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it.
~ Richard Lamm
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
~ James Russell Lowell
Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else.
~ Nicolas Walter
