Will Rogers

"Applause, mingled with boos and hisses, is about all that the average voter is able or willing to contribute to public life."

Elmer Davis

"Bush Sr. was a jerk, Quayle an idiot, Clinton was atrocious and disgusting, most of those who persecuted him were hypocritical, Gore is shallow and weak, Bradley is an idealist, Bush Jr. a fool, and all of the independent candidates act like they're on drugs."

David Borenstein

"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

"Governments should not possess instruments of coercion and violence denied to their citizens."

Edgar A. Suter

"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 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

"If people behaved like governments, you'd call the cops."

Kelvin Throop

"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 is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government."

John W. Gardner

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

Tom Stoppard