government
Quotations
Quotations on the topic of ‘government’ from all listed authors (click on the ‘click to view listing’ links to view each quote in full).
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“This used to be a government of checks and balances. Now it’s all checks and no balances.” -Gracie Allen
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“The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don’t always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!” -Chinua Achebe
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“The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.” -John Adams
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“That fatal drollery called a representative government.” -Benjamin Disraeli
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“The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.” -John Ruskin
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“For Forms of Government let fools contest whatever is best administered is best.” -Alexander Pope
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“The government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes.” -Calvin Coolidge
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“Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don’t vote.” -Paul Harvey
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“Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.” -Edmund Burke
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“The nuclear arsenal that Pakistan has, I believe is secure. I think the government and the military have taken adequate steps to protect that.” -Hillary Clinton
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“In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom we have to say, Like People like Government.” -Thomas Carlyle
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“A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.” -Friedrich August von Hayek
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“Gun control means control. It means control for the government and the government starts controlling the people.” -Luke Scott
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“Anyone who thinks that the vice-president can take a position independent of the president of his administration simply has no knowledge of politics or government. You are his choice in a political marriage, and he expects your absolute loyalty.” -Hubert H. Humphrey
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“To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.” -Thomas Paine
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“Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.” -Alexander Hamilton
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“Well private money can take risks in a way that government money often isn’t willing to.” -Bill Gates
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“In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.” -Ambrose Bierce
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“There is too much government today. We’ve got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.” -Ray Bradbury
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“One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don’t go into government.” -Donald Trump
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“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.” -Douglas MacArthur
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“I don’t think the government should be in the trailer-park business. I don’t think they know how to run a trailer park.” -Billy Graham
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“Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.” -Bertrand Russell
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“No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt
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“I had the privilege of practicing medicine in the early ’60s, before we had any government. It worked rather well, and there was nobody on the street suffering with no medical care.” -Ron Paul
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“In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.” -Alexis de Tocqueville
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“I don’t want to transform America. I want to restore to America the economic values of freedom and opportunity and limited government that has made us the powerhouse of the world.” -Mitt Romney
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“It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.” -Ansel Adams
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“I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If He put it here and He wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?” -Willie Nelson
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“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.” -H. L. Mencken
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“The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.” -John Quincy Adams
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“Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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“Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.” -Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.” -Thomas Sowell
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“There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.” -Will Rogers
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“The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.” -Voltaire
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“The universe never did make sense I suspect it was built on government contract.” -Robert A. Heinlein
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“I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.” -Napoleon Bonaparte
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“I was ecstatic they re-named ‘French Fries’ as ‘Freedom Fries’. Grown men and women in positions of power in the U.S. government showing themselves as idiots.” -Johnny Depp
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“Freedom isn’t free. It shouldn’t be a bragging point that ‘Oh, I don’t get involved in politics,’ as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn’t insist on their right…
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“I’m not really conservative. I’m conservative on certain things. I believe in less government. I believe in fiscal responsibility and all those things that maybe Republicans used to believe in but don’t any more.” -Clint Eastwood
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“The Negro revolution is controlled by foxy white liberals, by the Government itself. But the Black Revolution is controlled only by God.” -Malcolm X
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“I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it’s the government.” -Woody Allen
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“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.” -Leo Tolstoy
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“There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile to continue talking about peace and non-violence against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenceless people.” -Nelson Mandela
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“The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.” -George Bernard Shaw
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“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” -Henry David Thoreau
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“The government is us we are the government, you and I.” -Theodore Roosevelt
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“The administration of justice is the firmest pillar of government.” -George Washington
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“The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.” -Plato
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“By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.” -Albert Camus
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“Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.” -Benito Mussolini
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“Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.” -Ronald Reagan
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“I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
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“He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.” -Confucius
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“My brother Bob doesn’t want to be in government – he promised Dad he’d go straight.” -John F. Kennedy
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“Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.” -Aristotle
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“There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.” -Benjamin Franklin
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“The second office in the government is honorable and easy the first is but a splendid misery.” -Thomas Jefferson
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“The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” -Ayn Rand
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“The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.” -Abraham Lincoln
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“Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.” -Mark Twain
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“When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensible of duties.” -Marquis de Lafayette
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“When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.” -Winston Churchill
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“The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.” -Dalai Lama
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“Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
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“Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.” -Albert Einstein
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“The essence of good government is trust.” -Kathleen Sebelius
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“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
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“I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. We are supposed to work it.” -Alexander Woollcott
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“Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.” -William E. Gladstone
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“Democracy is an abuse of statistics.” -Jorge Luis Borges
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“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
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“The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.” -Wilhelm Reich
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“The mistakes made by Congress wouldn’t be so bad if the next Congress didn’t keep trying to correct them.” -Cullen Hightower
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“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.” -Lord Acton
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“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
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“I have long believed taxpayers make better use of their money than the government ever could.” -Kay Bailey Hutchison
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“To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.” -Wendell Phillips
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“The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.” -Lewis Mumford
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“Government is an unnecessary evil. Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness.” -Fred Woodworth
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“Americans no longer look to government for economic security rather, they look to their portfolios.” -Bill Owens
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“Our nation is built on the bedrock principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” -Adrian Cronauer
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“Government alone cannot solve the problems we deal with in our correctional facilities, treatment centers, homeless shelters and crisis centers – we need our faith-based and community partners.” -Dirk Kempthorne
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“Bureaucracy gives birth to itself and then expects maternity benefits.” -Dale Dauten
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“There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.” -Charles de Secondat
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“The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.” -Thomas Paine
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“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
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“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” -James Madison
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“The people are the government, administering it by their agents they are the government, the sovereign power.” -Andrew Jackson
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“Governments never learn. Only people learn.” -Milton Friedman
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“To rule is easy, to govern difficult.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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“Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.” -Lily Tomlin
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“The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.” -Henry Ward Beecher
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“People try to live within their income so they can afford to pay taxes to a government that can’t live within its income.” -Robert Half
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“In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?” -Saint Augustine
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“Our government… teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law it invites every man to become a law unto himself it invites anarchy.” -Louis D. Brandeis
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“Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.” -James Russell Lowell
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“Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.” -John Kenneth Galbraith
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“It’s not the voting that’s democracy it’s the counting.” -Tom Stoppard
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“Majority rule only works if you’re also considering individual rights. Because you can’t have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.” -Larry Flynt
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“In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it.” -Cal Thomas
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“It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.” -John W. Gardner
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“Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.” -William Penn
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“Washington is a place where politicians don’t know which way is up and taxes don’t know which way is down.” -Robert Orben
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“The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.” -Ronald Reagan
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“Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed too severe, seldom executed.” -Benjamin Franklin
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“That government is best which governs least.” -Henry David Thoreau
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“If ‘pro’ is the opposite of ‘con’ what is the opposite of ‘progress’?” -Paul Harvey
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“Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven’t had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln.” -Will Rogers
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“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
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“Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” -Otto von Bismarck
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“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” -Denis Diderot
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“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.” -H. L. Mencken
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“The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.” -Gore Vidal
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“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.” -Vladimir Lenin
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“For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.” -Jonathan Swift
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“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” -Thomas Jefferson
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“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” -Winston Churchill
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“No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.” -Abraham Lincoln
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“Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.” -Ayn Rand
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“We have the best government that money can buy.” -Mark Twain
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