Top 1200 American Government Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

I've been involved in the intelligence side of the federal government for a long time. We all know that we have to have a balance between security to protect the American people and liberty. We take an oath to protect and defend the constitution and the American people.

According to the Tax Foundation, the average American worker works 127 days of the year just to pay his taxes. That means that government owns 36 percent of the average American's output-which is more than feudal serfs owed the robber barons. That 36 percent is more than the average American spends on food, clothing and housing. In other words, if it were not for taxes, the average American's living standard would at least double.

When government gets too big, freedom is lost. Government is supposed to be the servant. But when a government can tax the people with no limit or restraint on what the government can take, then the government has become the master.

We're just trying to end illegitimate government support for a single technology, which is un-American. We should be leading the world in the next generation of technological innovation. But we can't unleash private capital because of what the government is doing to stifle innovation and to choke competition.

A fundamental premise of American democratic theory is that government exists to serve the people. ... Public records are one portal through which the people observe their government, ensuring its accountability, integrity, and equity while minimizing sovereign mischief and malfeasance

Our country was founded on a distrust of government. Our founding fathers gave power to the people to keep an eye on government. So when politicians say, 'Trust me,' they're actually being very un-American.

The economical policies that are instigated really makes you think that the American government is a bunch of evil bastards. So just because you're black, you're still representing that government, and when Obama came into office he enacted the same policies that we would critique other presidents for.

The United States of America took a giant step toward a totalitarian socialist government when the Supreme Court voted to uphold Obamacare, allowing the individual mandate for the government to force American citizens to buy health insurance whether they want to or not.

The only way that American troops could have stayed in Iraq is to get an agreement from the then-Iraqi government that would have protected our troops, and the Iraqi government would not give that.

A native American group has filed a class-action lawsuit against the government for mismanagement of oil, gas, grazing, timber and other royalties since 1887. They're seeking $100 billion. Here's the good news: The government has responded what I believe is an appropriate counteroffer: A two-cent Navajo stamp.

The Iranian leaders describe the American government exactly the way American analysts describe the Iranian one, as an opaque, factionalized system with competing power centers, over which the president exercises very limited authority.

The mentality in Washington is, 'Look what our government - what our government can do for the American people.' We've got to get away from that mentality, and realize it's too expensive. We can't afford it.

Let each one of us say, 'I am an American. I intend to stay an American. I will do my best to wipe from my heart hate, rancor and political prejudice. I will sustain my government. And, through good days or bad, I will try to serve my country.'

The American taxing structure, the purpose of which was to serve the people, began instead to serve the insatiable appetite of government. If you will forgive me, you know someone has once likened government to a baby. It is an alimentary canal with an appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

If you will help run our government in the American way, then there will never be any danger of our government running America in the wrong way.

We are all representatives of the American people. We all do town hall meetings. We all talk to our constituents. And I've got to tell you, the American people are engaged. And if you think they want a government takeover of health care, I would respectfully submit you're not listening to them.

Any time the United States government turns over an American citizen, including military personnel, to the government of another country, it is in our nature to want to make sure that they receive the best treatment, the fairest treatment, and the most humane treatment.

People are quick to say with their mouth full, 'Well, the American farmer is on the dole.' But a loaf of bread is two bucks when it could be 10 bucks. I know what it is with the government in my business. We would be all for not having government in our business, but we need a fair system.

The heritage of the American Revolution is forgotten, and the American government, for better and for worse, has entered into theheritage of Europe as though it were its patrimony--unaware, alas, of the fact that Europe's declining power was preceded and accompanied by political bankruptcy, the bankruptcy of the nation-state and its concept of sovereignty.

I think the American people said, look, you know, we can't control what every government does to its people, but we shouldn't be aiding and assisting a government in having these kinds of repressive prisons. It added to the public outcry against our involvement in Vietnam.

The American Dream was not about government's taking huge sums of money (under the label of "taxation") from citizens by force. The American Dream was about individualism and the opportunity to achieve success without interference from others.

I've got nothing against any individual American, except that there aren't any. They're always Irish-American, African-American... There's never an American-American you can blame.

The fact that our government is using instruments of government like the IRS to punish its opponents, this is not the kind of thing that is a Democrat or a Republican issue. This is an American issue... A lot of people do not feel free to express themselves.

I think there's going to be a tug of war in this country over who are the real patriots because at a time of national crisis, economic collapse and calamity, ecological peril and social dislocation, the American people deserve to be a partner to the American government.

We are in the presence of a recruiting drive systematically and deliberately undertaken by American business, by American universities, and to a lesser extent, American government, often initiated by talent scouts specially sent over here to buy British brains and preempt them for service of the U.S.A. ... I look forward earnestly to the day when some reform of the American system of school education enables them to produce their own scientists so that, in an aimiable free trade of talent, there may be adequate interchange between our country and theirs, and not a one-way traffic.

Three times before, in the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1920s, oligarchs took over the American government and threatened to destroy democracy. In each case, they overreached, and regular folks took back their government.

The fact that an African American sits in the White House at the helm of government in the United States of America on this 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation represents both phenomenal political symbolism and a victory of faith in democracy that should not be lost on any American.

What many commentators have missed in the ongoing attack on Edward Snowden is not that he uncovered information that made clear how corrupt and intrusive the American government has become - how willing it is to engage in vast crimes against the American public.

Withdrawal of American troops must be a unilateral act, as the invasion of Vietnam by the American government was a unilateral act in the first place.

I consider myself a kind of a one-man government-in-exile. I don't want to call it a government - let's call it one man's idea of American freedom in exile.

What's really important about WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans. They have hacked American websites, American accounts of private people, of institutions. Then they have given that information to WikiLeaks for the purpose of putting it on the Internet.

There is no way to avoid the reality that the American government in the past years has been the most spectacularly hypocrisy-driven government in the world. We rival the Soviet Union in some stages, in some ways, in hypocrisy.

The fact that the American government has formally set aside an enormous yearly budget of nearly $75 million to increase cultural exchanges in order to bring about what it calls "regime change" has muddied the waters and complicated American Studies in Iran more than anything else.

In terms of how Iranians see the U.S. government, that's a difficult question. But in terms of how Iranians see Americans, there is a very good mutual belief that they have so much in common with American people and they feel totally related to them. In terms of government, definitely there are some hardcore hardliners who hate the U.S. government, but at the same time, there are some more moderate.

First of all, the world criticizes American foreign policy because Americans criticize American foreign policy. We shouldn't be surprised about that. Criticizing government is a God-given right - at least in democracies.

Americans' liberty is perishing beneath the constant growth of government power. Federal, state and local government's are confiscating citizens' property, trampling their rights, and decimating their opportunities more than ever before.... American liberty can still be rescued from the encroachments of government. The first step to saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose unless fundamental political changes occur.

The single most important duty of the federal government is to protect and defend our national sovereignty. There are new and disturbing reports of American nuclear submarines passing though Canadian waters without obtaining the permission of, or even notifying, the Canadian government.

A dramatic unwinding of that relationship [between USA and China], by way of an aggressive trade policy, is one of the nightmare scenarios for the global economy as a whole, because it would result in a spiraling depreciation of the dollar, a surge in American interests rates, a collapse in the market for American government debt.

There is nothing more American than raising your voice in protest, and there is nothing more un-American than a government that attempts to hit the mute button when it doesn't like what it hears.

There are many examples in our history of overheated rhetoric leading to fear and prejudice and government overreach. My own grandfather, a sociologist, was dragged in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He said he wasn't a Communist and explained that American Negroes were patriots like everyone else.

Is the American tradition of self-reliance disappearing? That's a painful question for conservatives to ponder. After all, we're dedicated to reducing the role of government and promoting individual freedom and opportunity. But the facts, while sad, are clear: More Americans today depend more heavily on government than ever before.

Russian government was in contact with multiple [Donald] Trump campaign sources while they were doing [attacks]. Russian nemesis in the American government, U.S. State Department, CIA, are not faring well since Donald Trump came to power.

You will never meet anyone who admires the American founders more than I do, but they were human, they made mistakes. Perhaps their worst was that their Bill of Rights stops at the border. Inside the US, the federal government has been limited. Beyond the borders, the government has been able to do anything it wanted.

Baseball is the exponent of American Courage, Confidence, Combativeness, American Dash, Discipline, Determination, American Energy, Eagerness, Enthusiasm, American Pluck, Persistency, Performance, American Spirit, Sagacity, Success, American Vim, Vigor, Virility.

The Middle Way included the largest public works project in American history: the Interstate Highway system, which updated American roads for a driving generation with leisure time on their hands, but expanded the federal government's purview.

American diplomats meet with formal government officials, we meet with opposition protesters, not just in Hong Kong or China. This literally happens in every single country in which an American embassy is present.

We need the federal government to assert their supremacy over the immigration issue and make it clear to state legislatures, cowboy cops, and the American people that the federal government is in charge and effectively enforcing and regulating immigration.

The American people don't trust the Federal Government to enforce our immigration laws, and we will not be able to do anything on immigration until we first prove to the American people that illegal immigration is under control. And we can do that. We know what it takes to do that.

Reagan gave essentially the same speech from the beginning to the end of his political career, which was always, 'The American people are great, the government always screws things up, let's get the government out of the way.' On the foreign policy side it was, 'Communism is bad, and we're going to defeat it.'

I think of myself, an Iranian/American artist, and wonder what would I want if I'm ever imprisoned by the Iranian government for the work that I make? I answer: I would hope that the United States government comes to my rescue.

It is now an article of absolute faith among Republicans that 'the government' is an entity separate from 'the American people,' which they say the same way that the old Jesuits talked about 'the mystical Body of Christ.' It is now an ironclad commandment of conservative orthodoxy that 'the government' is something parasitic and alien.

The reason given by the President in asking Congress to declare war against Germany is that the German government has declared certain war zones, within which, by the use of submarines, she sinks, without notice, American ships and destroys American lives.

I knew that good people who wanted to be a part of the American dream have become trapped in dependency because the federal government and the state government had made it in their economic interest not to take a job because the benefits that they didn't work were better. I changed that.

Much to Mr. Obama's chagrin, ours is not a government run by fiat. The American people have shown quite clearly that they will not simply roll over while this administration seeks to undercut our founding principles in pursuit of its preferred European model of government.

The American people deserve truthfulness, not more political campaigning. The American people deserve a responsible government that seeks to address their needs, not more ideological dogma.

We have Mr. Putin in Russia. And he appears to be a popular president of Russia. And I don't think it's the business of the National Endowment for Democracy or American diplomats or American foreign policy to try to change the nature of that government.

Far too many government spending programs have gone years, even decades, without being reauthorized, leaving the American people less able to effectively review, rethink, and possibly eliminate government programs.

Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic, expression of Americanism. Thus, the founding fathers of America saw it, and thus with God's help, it will continue to be.

Government is not the problem, and government is not the solution. We - the American people - we are the solution.

In my lifetime, it's the Supreme Court, not Congress, that integrated our public schools, that allowed people of different races to marry, and established the principle that our government should respect the value of privacy of American families. These decisions are the legacy of justices who chose to expand American freedom.