Government Quotes

The hunger for peace is too great, the hour in history too late, for any government to mock men's hopes with mere words and promises and gestures.

The governments principally involved, to the extent permitted by elementary prudence, should begin now and continue to make joint contributions from their stockpiles of normal uranium and fissionable materials to an international atomic energy agency.

If the use of local police powers had been sufficient, our traditional method of leaving the problems in those hands would have been pursued. But when large gatherings of obstructionists made it impossible for the decrees of the Court to be carried out, both the law and the national interest demanded that the President take action.

Let's do in the federal Government only those things that people themselves cannot do at all, or cannot so well do in their individual capacities.

The Founders conceived government as the servant, not the master of the individual.

The government in Washington belongs to you.

Almost any one of the newborn states of the world would far rather embrace Communism or any other form of dictatorship than acknowledge the political domination of another government, even though that brought to each citizen a far higher standard of living.

A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research - these and many other possibilities... may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government.

The free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.

We must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

The proper role of government, however, is that of partner with the farmer - never his master. By every possible means we must develop and promote that partnership - to the end that agriculture may continue to be a sound, enduring foundation for our economy and that farm living may be a profitable and satisfying experience.

Beware the military-industrial complex.

I firmly believe that the army of persons who urge greater and greater centralization of authority and greater and greater dependence upon the Federal Treasury are really more dangerous to our form of government than any external threat that can possibly be arrayed against us.

If an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.

Any nations right to a form of government and economic system of its own choosing is inalienable. Any nations attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

As quickly as you start spending federal money in large amounts, it looks like free money.

In other words, our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is.

Today I think that prayer is just simply a necessity, because by prayer I believe we mean an effort to get in touch with the Infinite. We know that even our prayers are imperfect. Even our supplications are imperfect. Of course they are. We are imperfect human beings. But if we can back off from those problems and make the effort, then there is something that ties us all together. We have begun in our grasp of that basis of understanding, which is that all free government is firmly founded in a deeply-felt religious faith.