Government Duty Quotes

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

The first duty of this government is to give the workers work.

Asserting the equality of all men before the law, we hold that it is the duty of the government, in its dealings with the people, to mete out equal and exact justice to all citizens, of whatever nativity, race or persuasion—religious or political.

The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

I believe it is the responsibility of our government to protect the U.S., including U.S.-flag vessels.

The first duty of our Government to its own citizens and foreigners within its borders is the preservation of order. Unless and until that duty is met a government is not even eligible for recognition among the family of nations.

The chief duty of the National Government in connection with the currency of the country is to coin money and declare its value.

The Government will regard as its first and foremost duty to revive the spirit of unity and cooperation in the nation and to preserve and defend its basic principles of Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.

It is only the novice in political economy who thinks it is the duty of government to make its citizens happy - government has no such office.

I have long believed that the first duty of government is to protect the safety of our citizens.

It is well, when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered, amongst the multitude! Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions may be propagated amongst the people. Diffusion, then, rather than discovery, is the duty of our government.

It is the obligation of every government to yield protection to their citizens as the consideration for their obedience

if any government does not acknowledge the rights of the human person or violates them, it not only fails in its duty, but its orders completely lack juridical force

Government is not a trade which any man or body of men has a right to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust, in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumable. It has of itself no rights; they are altogether duties.

It is the duty of the Government to spare no opportunity of opening fresh outlets for the energy of British commerce and enterprise.

It's the duty of any government: where there is disregard of the law, that law and order must be instituted.

The wisdom, the duty of mild government I conceive to be the great but disregarded lesson of all history.

The chief duty of governments, in so far as they are coercive, is to restrain those who would interfere with the inalienable rights of the individual, among which are the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to the pursuit of happiness and the right to worship God according to the dictates of ones conscience.

It is admitted that all men have an equal right to the enjoyment of their life, property and personal security; and it is the duty as it is the object, of government to protect every man in this enjoyment.

After Emancipation, it was the plain duty of some one to assume this group leadership and training of the Negro laborer. I will not stop here to inquire whose duty it was—whether that of the white ex-master who had profited by unpaid toil, or the Northern philanthropist whose persistence brought on the crisis, or the National Government whose edict freed the bondmen; I will not stop to ask whose duty it was, but I insist it was the duty of some one to see that these workingmen were not left alone and unguided, without capital, without land, without skill, without economic organization, without even the bald protection of law, order, and decency,—left in a great land, not to settle down to slow and careful internal development, but destined to be thrown almost immediately into relentless and sharp competition with the best of modern workingmen under an economic system where every participant is fighting for himself, and too often utterly regardless of the rights or welfare of his neighbor.

I believe that the Government's first duty is to defend its citizens, to defend them against the harms that come out of hate.

A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.

I can't possibly put myself in his [Tony Blair's] shoes and be inside his head but what I can say is that the security of the nation is the first duty of any government but at the same time for me going to war would always be the last resort. I would exhaust all other opportunities first.

National security is the first duty of government but we are also committed to reversing the substantial erosion of civil liberties.

Well the first order of government is to preserve the public order and safety.