“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
Thomas Jefferson
Foreign PolicyPeace
Government Quotes
200 FAMOUS QUOTES · GOVERNMENT
Government Quotes
Read the best government quotes on democracy, law, leadership and liberty from Madison, Jefferson, Mencius, Kautilya, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Plato and more.
“Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.”
James Madison
PowerOppression
“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
James Madison
Checks And BalancesShort Quotes
“A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.”
Alexander Hamilton
CourageNation
“The ruler is the boat and the common people are the water. The water can carry the boat, or the water can capsize the boat.”
Xunzi
People PowerLeadership
“Good government obtains when those who are near are made happy, and those who are far off are attracted.”
Confucius
Good GovernmentHappiness
“Oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.”
Confucius
OppressionShort Quotes
“If the sovereign be benevolent, all will be benevolent. If the sovereign be righteous, all will be righteous.”
Mencius
Leading By ExampleVirtue
“The king with none to censure him, bereft of safeguard all, though none his ruin seek, shall surely fall.”
Thiruvalluvar
CriticismAccountability
“Where king is easy of access, where no harsh word repels, that land's high praises every land will tell.”
Thiruvalluvar
Approachable LeadersLeadership
“The king of worth, who can words bitter to the ear endure, beneath the shadow of his power the world abides secure.”
Thiruvalluvar
ListeningLeadership
“The true source of rights is duty. If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek.”
Mahatma Gandhi
RightsDuty
“Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy.”
B. R. Ambedkar
Social JusticeDemocracy
“On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality.”
B. R. Ambedkar
EqualityIndia
“Citizenship consists in the service of the country.”
Jawaharlal Nehru
CitizenshipService
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
John Adams
TruthEvidence
“The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.”
George Washington
ConstitutionLoyalty
“Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God.”
George Washington
IntegrityLeadership
“We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Benjamin Franklin
UnityFunny
“Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets.”
Abraham Lincoln
VotingPeace
“The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.”
Abraham Lincoln
PeopleTrust
“I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.”
Ulysses S. Grant
LawReform
“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it.”
Woodrow Wilson
LibertyPeople
“Necessitous men are not free men.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
PovertyFreedom
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures.”
Harry S. Truman
Free SpeechWarning