Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it.
Richard Lamm

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
James Russell Lowell

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.
Jorge Luis Borges

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H. L. Mencken

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
Sydney J. Harris

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
P. J. O'Rourke

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
Jonathan Swift

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
P. J. O'Rourke

Government is an unnecessary evil. Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness.
Fred Woodworth

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Thomas Paine

Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.
William E. Gladstone

I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.
Alexander Woollcott

If 'pro' is the opposite of 'con' what is the opposite of 'progress'?
Paul Harvey

If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary; if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also.
Fred Woodworth

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
James Madison

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?
Saint Augustine

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
Thomas Jefferson

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
Tom Stoppard

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
James Madison

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
Otto von Bismarck

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
Benjamin Franklin

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
William Penn

Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.
Larry Flynt

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Denis Diderot

Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.
Lily Tomlin

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
Abraham Lincoln

Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven't had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln.
Will Rogers

Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
Louis D. Brandeis

Talk is cheap - except when Congress does it.
Cullen Hightower

That government is best which governs least.
Henry David Thoreau

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.
Ronald Reagan

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.
Lord Acton

The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.
Wilhelm Reich

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
Gore Vidal

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
Milton Friedman

The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.
Thomas Paine

The mistakes made by Congress wouldn't be so bad if the next Congress didn't keep trying to correct them.
Cullen Hightower

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.
Karl Marx

The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.
Lewis Mumford

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.
Henry Ward Beecher

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
Will Rogers

To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.
Wendell Phillips

To rule is easy, to govern difficult.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Washington is a place where politicians don't know which way is up and taxes don't know which way is down.
Robert Orben

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill

You don't pay taxes - they take taxes.
Chris Rock