Nancy Pelosi Quotes

Government is not an exact science.

The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.

It is with government as with medicine, its only business is the choice of evils. Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty.

American government is not dominated by engineers, it is dominated by lawyers. Engineers are interested in substance and building things; lawyers are interested in process and rights and getting the ideology correctly blended. And so there is sort of no really concrete plan for the future.

What is the purpose of the government? When you examine most political debates, you usually find that question at the bedrock. What makes a government good? What makes one effective? What is government supposed to do, and what shouldn’t it do? The reason we disagree so much about politics is often because we hold different theories about what the purpose of government is.

Government should steer, not row.

We should distinguish carefully skepticism about Big Government from contempt for all government.

A constitution, in the American sense of the word, is a written instrument by which the fundamental powers of the government are established, limited, and defined, and by which these powers are distributed among several departments, for their more safe and useful exercise, for the benefit of the body politic.

I know people don't like America very much, but the one thing it's very good on is local government.

Obama is trying to paint us as a caricature, as if we're some bizarre individualists who are hardcore libertarians. It's a false dichotomy and intellectually lazy. Of course we believe in government. We think government should do what it does really well, but that it has limits.

No one branch of the U.S. government should have supremacy over the other two.

Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests.

Despite the enormous role that local government plays in our daily lives, the constitution makes not one mention of it.

I believe all universities should at least offer courses in politics and policy implementation.

Maybe it's my libertarian philosophy: but being in government is hard.

The State or the States.

What we have to do is strike a balance between the idea that government shall do everything and the idea that government shall do nothing.

In the United States almost every political question becomes a legal question—or at least a question with legal dimensions.

I hold them [politics] to be subject to laws as fixed as matter itself, and to be as fit a subject for the application of the highest intellectual power.

I did not love politics. As a matter of fact, I hated politics. I loved governing which is … a different thing.

I am sure of my ability to form a good government.

Limited government is best.

The left loves the courts. They hate constitutional limited government.

The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone.

Government is a necessary evil