Saturday Quote-a-thon: Government

Since I'll be away on government business, here are some government-related quotes for Saturday.

Businesses stay open for business by solving people's problems. Government stays open for business not by solving problems, but by maintaining them.
--Jay Charles

The repeated failure of well-intentioned programs is not an accident. It is not simply the result of mistakes of execution. The failure is deeply rooted in the use of bad means to achieve good objectives.
--Milton Friedman


Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
--Sydney J. Harris

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
--Thomas Jefferson

The future is purchased by the present.
--Samuel Johnson

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be President, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.
--John F. Kennedy

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.
--Doug Larsen

Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way. --Abraham Lincoln

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.
--Niccolò Machiavelli

There's a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and is much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.
--Gen George Patton

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.
--William Penn

There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
--Ayn Rand

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.
--Ronald Reagan

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
--Tom Robbins

No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.
--Theodore Roosevelt

In America, anyone can become president. That's one of the risks you have to take. --Adlai Stevenson

Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by traffic from both sides.
--Margaret Thatcher

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
--Mark Twain

No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence.
--Woodrow Wilson

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
-- Sir Barnett Cocks

A committee is a group that keeps the minutes and loses hours.
-- Milton Berle

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
-- Edward Abbey