Quotes about Government

When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

The government you elect is the government you deserve.

In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

Our properties within our own territories [should not] be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government. (A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.)

A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.