A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.

- Henry de Jouvenel

The most important political office is that of the private citizen.

- Louis D. Brandeis

You measure a government by how few people need help.

- Pat Schroeder

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

- Carl Sagan

No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent.

- Susan B. Anthony

No man is good enough to govern another man without his consent.

- Abraham Lincoln

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

- Frederick Douglass

I think most people... would be glad to pay the same taxes they paid when Bill Clinton was president, if only they could have the same economy they had when Bill Clinton was president.

- Howard Dean

I'm not afraid to shake up the system, and government needs more shaking up than any other system I know.

- Ann Richards

Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.

- Jimmy Carter

Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world class boeuf bourguignon: if you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are unlikely to do it well.

- Michael Wolfe

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

- John Gardner

To declare that the end justifies the means, to declare that the government may commit crimes, would bring terrible retribution.

- Louis D. Brandeis

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

I suggest that if you know history, then you might not be so easily fooled by the government when it tells you you must go to war for this or that reason -- that history is a protective armor against being misled.

- Howard Zinn

Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.

- Hubert H. Humphrey



The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living, or the dead?

- Thomas Paine



A flourishing, morally credible media is a vital component in the maintenance of genuinely public talk, argument about common good.

- Rowan D. Williams



We hold the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance.

- Thomas Paine



Those who want the government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide.

- Harry S Truman



More than ever before, there is a global understanding that long-term social, economic, and environmental development would be impossible without healthy families, communities, and countries.

- Gro H. Brundtland



In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.

- Walter Lippmann



I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

- Thomas Jefferson



I always believe that ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics.

- Barack Obama



The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself or others.

- Baruch Spinoza



Yes, our greatness as a nation has depended on individual initiative, on a belief in the free market. But it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, of mutual responsibility. The idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we're all in it together and everybody's got a shot at opportunity. Americans know this. We know that government can't solve all our problems - and we don't want it to. But we also know that there are some things we can't do on our own. We know that there are some things we do better together.

- Barack Obama



What Washington needs is adult supervision.

- Barack Obama



You know, there's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit -- the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us -- the child who's hungry, the steelworker who's been laid-off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town. When you think like this -- when you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others, whether they are close friends or distant strangers -- it becomes harder not to act; harder not to help.

- Barack Obama



If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

- Abraham Lincoln



Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.

- G. K. Chesterton



You who are journalists, writers, citizens, you have the right and duty to say to those you have elected that they must practice mindfulness, calm and deep listening, and loving speech. This is universal thing, taught by all religions.

- Thich Nhat Hanh



Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

- Barry Goldwater



Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

- John Ruskin



Not one Republican president has balanced the budget in 34 years. You can not trust Republicans with your money.

- Howard Dean



We live in a country where we're supposed to have freedom of the press and religious freedom, but I think to some degree, there's a sense of fear in America today, that if you say the wrong thing, what some people will consider what is wrong, if you step out of line, if you dissent, whether you be an entertainer, that somehow and some way this government or the forces to be will come down on you.

- John L. Lewis



Politics is the best show in America. I love animals and I love politicians and I love to watch both of 'em play either back home in their native state or after they have been captured and sent to the zoo or to Washington.

- Will Rogers



Look, Congress has allocated more money to finance the upcoming Iraqi elections than it has for the American elections. There's something wrong with that.

- Donna Brazile



Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

- George Bernard Shaw



Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

- George Jean Nathan



If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

- Henry David Thoreau



Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.

- Baruch Spinoza



The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime. . .

- Albert Einstein



It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment

- Elie Wiesel



I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them by education.

- Thomas Jefferson



It may be true that the government that governs best governs least. Unfortunately, the same is also true of the government that governs worst.

- Jane Elizabeth Auer