George Papandreou Quotes

There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy.

It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business.

The government may change faces from time to time, but it's not like we fight wars for democracy - we fight wars for capitalism and for oil.

No business is above government, and government must be empowered to deal adequately with any business that tries to rise above government.

He who is the most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power is as eager after for the prerogatives of government.

it is the people who control the Government, not the Government the people.

There are lots of levels of fear and complaint about the government getting involved in business. First and foremost, of course, is incompetence.

If people cannot limit government they will not for long be free.

We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our government has no power except that granted to it by the people It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

You are not prime minister of Australia because of some kind of process of divine selection. You are prime minister of Australia through the gift of the Australian people.

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.

It’s not about the budget; it’s about the power...So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.

It's not a weapon, [governments] don't kill, they don't conduct massacres, although massacres have been committed and many people were killed, but they stifle religion, they're afraid probably.

It is very difficult to reconcile the American ideal of a sovereign people capable of owning and managing their own government with an inability to own and manage their own business.

The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government ... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.

The throne we honour is the people's choice.

The government is supposed to respond to the will of the people. Not dictate to the people what they are doing.

I refuse to stand by while our democracy is trampled by politicians more concerned about amassing power than helping the people who sent them to Washington in the first place.

business itself is now the most powerful force for change in the world today, richer and faster by far than most governments. And what is it doing with this power? It is using free trade, the most powerful weapon at its disposal, to tighten its grip on the globe.

Government is not infallible. Government is only an executive control, a centralized authority for the purpose of expressing the will of the people; before you have a government you must have the people. Without the people there can be no government. The government must be, therefore, an expression of the will of the people.

No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and . . . . their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice . . . . These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.

Government is an apparatus of compulsion and coercion.

All governments use force and all assert that they are founded on reason. In fact, whether universal suffrage prevails or not, it is always an oligarchy that governs, finding ways to give to'the will of the people'the expression which the few desire.

You can have a strong government and a weak people, or strong people and weak government, but you cannot have both.

What is politically defined as economic planning is the forcible superseding of other people's plans by Government officials.