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In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?
-Proverb
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Office without pay makes thieves.
-Proverb
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You see, you all start with the premise that democracy is some good. I don't think it's worth a damn. I think Churchill is right, the only thing to be said for democracy is that there is nothing else that's any better, and therefore he used to say, Tyranny tempered by assassination, but lots of assassination. People say, If the Congress were more representative of the people it would be better. I say the Congress is too damn representative. It's just as stupid as the people are; just as uneducated, just as dumb, just as selfish. You know the Congress is a perfect example, and created to be a perfect example.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/acheson.htm
-Dean Acheson
interview with Theodore A. Wilson and Richard D. McKinzie, June 30, 1971
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Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed.
-Dean Acheson, from a speech in Independence, Missouri, March 31, 1962
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Fear is the foundation of most government.
-John Adams
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A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.
-Amos Bronson Alcott
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Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.
-Maury Amsterdam
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It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
-Walter Bagehot
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Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.
-Joy Baluch
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Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
-Honore de Balzac
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Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-Fr
Essays on Political Economy
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We all have the republican spirit in our veins, like syphilis in our bones. We are democratized and venerealized.
-Charles Baudelaire
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Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.
-Beverley Baxter
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The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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A Republican by principle and devotion, I will, until my death, oppose all Royalists and all enemies of my Government and the Republic.
-Jean Baptiste Bernadotte
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The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.
-Baron William Henry Beveridge
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Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
-Otto von Bismarck
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A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.
-Otto von Bismarck
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The art of government is not to let me grow stale.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
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Public instruction should be the first object of government.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
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Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
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The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.
-Count Boytzwnburg
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Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.
-Louis D. Brandeis
Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It (What Publicity Can Do, Ch 5, p. 92) (Frederick A. Stokes Co. ed.)
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But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.
-Basil Bunting
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Books about Government
