Top 100 Government Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

— Abraham Lincoln

52. “Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

53. “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

— Winston Churchill

54. “The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

55. “When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed.”

— Ayn Rand

56. “We all do better, when we all do better.”

— Paul Wellstone

57. “This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

58. “It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws.”

— Aristotle

59. “Don’t just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.”

— Barack Obama

60. “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

— Abraham Lincoln

61. “Big Brother is watching you.”

— George Orwell

62. “Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive.”

— John F. Kennedy

63. “The government you elect is the government you deserve.”

— Thomas Jefferson

64. “That government is best which governs least.”

— Henry David Thoreau

65. “Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong.”

— Ron Paul

66. “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”

— Edward R. Murrow

67. “Respect for human rights is not social work; it is not merely an act of compassion. It is the first obligation of government and the source of its legitimacy.”

— Ronald Reagan

68. “As for politics, I’m an anarchist. I hate governments and rules and fetters. Can’t stand caged animals. People must be free.”

— Charlie Chaplin

69. “Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.”

— Frank Zappa

70. “Don’t steal – the government hates competition!”

— Ron Paul

71. “People are always saying: ‘They’ll take care of it. The government will. Don’t worry, they will’. They who? It starts with us. It’s us. Or else it’ll never be done.”

— Michael Jackson

72. “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.”

— Thomas Jefferson

73. “The federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.”

— Ronald Reagan

74. “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.”

— Aesop

75. “Aim for the stars and maybe you’ll reach the sky.”

— Reinhold Niebuhr

76. “It’s hard, when you’re up to your armpits in alligators, to remember you came here to drain the swamp.”

— Ronald Reagan

77. “Democracy is not a form of government, but a form of social organisation.”

— B.R. Ambedkar

78. “All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy.”

— Ayn Rand

79. “The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.”

— Ludwig von Mises

80. “That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”

— Henry David Thoreau

81. “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”

— Milton Friedman

82. “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

83. “You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.”

— Winston Churchill

84. “Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than the government. It is almost the equal of family.- Don Corleone.”

— Mario Puzo

85. “Government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us.”

— Ronald Reagan

86. “Professional politicians like to talk about the value of experience in government. Nuts! The only experience you gain in politics is how to be political.”

— Ronald Reagan

87. “Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness.”

— Thomas Paine

88. “When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.”

— John F. Kennedy

89. “A Democracy is the most vile form of government there is!”

— Thomas Paine

90. “It does not matter what country we live in, who our leaders are, or even who we are. Because we are human, we therefore have rights. And because we have rights, governments are bound to protect them.”

— Hillary Clinton

91. “If the government is covering up knowledge of aliens, they are doing a better job of it than they do at anything else.”

— Stephen Hawking

92. “All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy.”

— Leo Tolstoy

93. “We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression.”

— Karen Horney

94. “Free enterprise has done more to reduce poverty than all the government programs dreamed up by Democrats.”

— Ronald Reagan

95. “The final solution for unemployment is work.”

— Calvin Coolidge

96. “Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much.”

— Abraham Lincoln

97. “God created marriage. No government subcommittee envisioned it. No social organization developed it. Marriage was conceived and born in the mind of God.”

— Max Lucado

98. “How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”

— Ronald Reagan

99. “We’ve gone astray from first principles. We’ve lost sight of the rule that individual freedom and ingenuity are at the very core of everything that we’ve accomplished. Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”

— Ronald Reagan

100. “I’ll be like Scarlett O’Hara-I’ll think about it tomorrow.”

— Ronald Reagan