Quotes by American Authors - Page 160

As I get older ... I become more convinced that good government is not a substitute for self-government.
Dwight Morrow
Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own existence?
Abraham Lincoln
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium of custom of inertia it is by no means a representative of reason.
George Santayana
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
Barry Goldwater
Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
Will Rogers
Bureaucracy the rule of no one has become the modern form of despotism.
Mary McCarthy
Doing what's right isn't the problem. It's knowing what's right.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Inflation is one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
Milton Friedman
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed and are right.
H.L. Mencken
No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States but I never saw the Government of the United States.
Woodrow Wilson
A friend of mine says that every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells and when I give a man an office I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing.
Woodrow Wilson
Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.
I.F. Stone
No man should be in public office who can't make more money in private life.
Thomas E. Dewey
Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one. This is a most valuable and sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.
Abraham Lincoln
We are under a Constitution but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.
Charles Evans Hughes
While the people retain their virtue and vigilence no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.
Abraham Lincoln
Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
Harry S. Truman
When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free and never was free again.
Edith Hamilton
Man's capacity for evil makes democracy necessary and man's capacity for good makes democracy possible.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The road to democracy is not a freeway. It is a toll road on which we pay by accepting and carrying out our civic responsibilities.
Lucius D. Clay
Egypt: Where the Israelites would still be if Moses had been a bureaucrat.
Laurence J. Peter
Bureaucrats are the only people in the world who can say absolutely nothing and mean it.
Hugh Sidey
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
A little public scandal is good once in a while - takes the tension out of the news.
Beryl Pfizer
What people say behind your back is your standing in the community.
Edgar Watson Howe
If you can't say something good about someone sit right here by me.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
The best-loved man or maid in the town would perish with anguish could they hear all that their friends say in the course of a day.
John Hay
Gossip is vice enjoyed vicariously - the sweet subtle satisfaction without the risk.
Kin Hubbard
Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody's reach And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech.
Ogden Nash
Gossip is when you hear something you like about someone you don't.
Earl Wilson
The crest and crowning of all good Life's final star is Brotherhood.
Edwin Markham
Happy were men if they but understood There is no safety but in doing good.
John Fountain
When you cease to make a contribution you begin to die.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The age of strong belief is over the good is no longer always very good.
D. L. Coles
It is one of the beautiful compensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Charles Dudley Warner
Take egotism out and you would castrate the benefactor.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If I knew ... that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good I should run for my life.
Henry David Thoreau
Giving is the highest expression of potency.
Erich Fromm
As Charles Lamb says there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them.
William James
If a friend is in trouble don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
Edgar Watson Howe
If you're naturally kind you attract a lot of people you don't like.
William Feather
We are all here on earth to help others what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
W.H. Auden
Pity costs nothin' and ain't worth nothin'.
Josh Billings
I expect to pass though this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to my fellow-creature let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.
Stephen Grellet
We'd all like a reputation for generosity and we'd all like to buy it cheap.
Mignon McLaughlin
The meaning of good and bad of better and worse is simply helping or hurting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In nature nothing can be given all things are sold.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good-humor makes all things tolerable.
Henry Ward Beecher
We have committed the Golden Rule to memory let us now commit it to life.
Edwin Markham
Do unto the other feller the way he'd like to do unto you an' do it fust.
Edward N. Westcott
You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns - you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!
W. J. Bryan
We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.
General Omar N. Bradley
He is more within us than we are ourselves.
Elizabeth Ann Seton
Every morning I spend fifteen minutes filling my mind full of God and so there's no room left for worry thoughts.
Howard Chandler Christy
Before me even as behind God is and all is well.
John Greenleaf Whittier
The experience of God or in any case the possibility of experiencing God is innate.
Alice Walker
Then comes the insight that All is God. One still realizes that the world is as it was but it does not matter it does not affect one's faith.
Abraham Heschel
Our human resources as marshalled by the will were not sufficient they failed utterly.... Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all our activities.
Alcoholics Anonymous
Deep down in every man woman and child is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity by pomp by worship of other things but in some form or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives are facts as old as man himself.
Alcoholics Anonymous
Courage is not afraid to weep and she is not afraid to pray even when she is not sure who she is praying to.
J. Ruth Gendler