Government Quotes - Page 62

I have known a great many politicians who have not managed to stay in power for 16 years. I have nevertheless already managed to remain at the helm for 18 years. I still want to achieve a great many things for my country. Experience is not a disadvantage here, especially as the head of government of a small country in a European setting that has become more difficult.

We are losing sight of civility in government and politics. Debate and dialogue is taking a back seat to the politics of destruction and anger and control. Dogma has replaced thoughtful discussion between people of differing views.

Engineering undergraduates should not be charged fees. They should receive grants, not student loans, and the government will get the money back long-term from increased exports.

The government means industry, if you know what I mean.

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the Government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the Nation that sets it forth.

The imposition of taxes has its limits. There is a maximum which cannot be transcended. Suppose the citizen to be taxed by the general government to the utmost extent of his ability, or a thing as much as it can possibly bear, and the state imposes a tax at the same time, which authority is to take it?

There are some issues that are not in control of the government. Two of those issues are human rights and personal freedoms are in the domain of Iran's conservative judicial system.

No citizen enjoys genuine freedom of religious conviction until the state is indifferent to every form of religious outlook from Atheism to Zoroastrianism.

the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.

Lobbyists in Washington are making six figure salaries selling our government out to the corporate interests and we just sit and smile as if nothing is happening while the poor folks are getting poorer and their pharmaceutical bills rise.

The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.

Everything which might cause doubt about the wisdom of the government or create discontent will be kept from the people. The basis of unfavorable comparisons with elsewhere, the knowledge of possible alternatives to the course actually taken, information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve conditions--all will be suppressed. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced and uniformity of views not enforced.

The bigger the government, the greater the corruption

Do you know what I think white people wholly own? I think freedom of speech is a white thing. This is something that white people do. I think governments, this is a white thing.

You don't pay taxes - they take taxes.

If any person has a good word for the previous government that is good enough for me to have him shot.

As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The American attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both.

But, Jefferson worried that the people - and the argument goes back to Thucydides and Aristotle - are easily misled. He also stressed, passionately and repeatedly, that it was essential for the people to understand the risks and benefits of government, to educate themselves, and to involve themselves in the political process. Without that, he said, the wolves will take over.

The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans.

If a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled.

Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.

Government ought to be all outside and no inside. . . . Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety.

Obviously a Conservative government will always leave taxes lower than they have been under Labour. Those things go with the territory of the Conservative Party.

Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, that don't hurt anybody. When they do something is when they become dangerous.

It is sometimes argued that one of the benefits of legalizing addictive drugs is that they could be taxed, and the government revenues enhanced. From this perspective, this would be the only valid case against legalization.