Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

-Burke, Edmund
  Reflections on the Revolution in France.

And having looked to government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them. To avoid that evil, government will redouble the causes of it; and then it will become inveterate and incurable.

-Burke, Edmund
  Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, Nov (published1800).

The Government of the absolute majority, instead of the Government of the people, isbut the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.

-Calhoun,John Caldwell
  Speech, US Senate,15 Feb.

The only good government†is a bad one in a hell of a fright.

-Cary, (Arthur) Joyce Lunel
  The Horse's Mouth, ch.32.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

-Chesterton, G(ilbert) K(eith)
  In the NewYork Times,1 Feb.

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

-Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer
  Speech in the House of Commons,11 Nov.

Do not criticize your Government when out of the country. Never cease to do so when at home.

-Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer
Attributed.

Canada could have enjoyed: English government, French culture, And American know-how. Instead it ended up with: English know-how, French government, And American culture.

-Colombo,John Robert
  'O Canada', collected in  Al Purdy (ed)  The New Romans (1968).

But without the trust of the people, no government can stand.

-Confucius or K'ung Fu-tse,'The MasterK'ung'
c.479  BC  The Analects.

There are only two kinds of government, the scarcely tolerable and the absolutely unbearable.

-Dafoe,JohnW
Characteristic remark, quoted in Murray Donnelly Dafoe of the Free Press (1968).

Your sister isgiven to government.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^1  Joe Gargery. Great Expectations, ch.7.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
  Coningsby, bk.2, ch.1.

Government itself at length must fall To nature's state, where all have right to all.

-Dryden,John
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.793^4.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for thedisastrousrise of misplaced powers exists and will persist. 302

-Eisenhower, Dwight D(avid)
  Farewell address to the nation,17  Jan.

Worst damnfool mistake I ever made was letting myself be elected Vice-President of the United States. Should have stuck†as Speaker of the House† Gave up the second most important job in Government foreight long years as Roosevelt's spare tire.

-Garner,John Nance
  In the Saturday Evening Post, 2 Nov.

Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of the war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.

-Heller,Joseph
  Milo Minderbinder. Catch-22, ch.24.

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain. Fancy giving money to the Government! Nobody will see the stuff again.

-Herbert, SirA(lan) P(atrick)
  'Too Much!'.

Thereisa certainbasis oftruth inthefear thatthe Russian government is beginning to have of communism, for communism isTsarist autocracy turned upside down.

-Herzen, Alexander Ivanovich
^7  Byloe i dumy (My Past and Thoughts, translated by Constance Garnett,1924).

They that are discontented under monarchy call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy call it oligarchy; so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes that want of government is any new kind of government.

-Hobbes,Thomas
Leviathan, pt.2, ch.19.

But liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

-Huxley, Aldous Leonard
  'Brave New World Revisited', in Esquire.