A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom slowly broadens down From precedent to precedent.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'You ask me, why, though ill at ease', stanza 3, l.9^12.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

-Thoreau, Henry David
  Civil Disobedience.

You can always tell employees of the government by the total vacancy which occupies the space where most other people have faces. 863

-Toole,John Kennedy
A Confederacy of Dunces (published1980), ch.9, pt.1. 4

A faineant government is not the worst government that England can have. It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.

-Trollope, Anthony
  Phineas Finn, ch.13.

Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his Government a Fair Deal.

-Truman, Harry S
  Speech to Congress, 6 Sep.

A politician is a man who understandsgovernment, and ittakes a politiciantoruna Government. A statesman isa politician who has been dead10 or15 years.

-Truman, Harry S
  NewYorkWorldTelegram,12 Apr.

No more distressing moment can ever face a British Government than that which requires it to come to a hard and fast and specific decision.

-Tuchman, BarbaraW(ertheim)
  The Guns of August, ch.9.

Why does one never hear of government funding for the preservation and encouragement of comic strips, girlie magazines and TV soap operas? Because these genres still hold the audience they were created to amuse and instruct.

-Updike,John Hoyer
  In the NewYork Review of Books,18 Jul.

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

-Washington, BookerTaliaferro
  Inaugural address, 30 Apr.

In a political point of view, nothing can possiblyafford greater stability to a popular Government than the education of the people.

-Whitbread, Samuel
  House of Commons,19 Feb.

   What the federal government does basically is borrow money from people and mail it to people.

-Will, George
  Of entitlement programs. ABC TV broadcast,19 Sep.

Every line in the government's budget has its own constituency.

-Wriston,Walter Bigelow
  Risk and Other Four-LetterWords.