Governmental Action Quotes

No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is: coercive action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury-the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.

When the President makes something a priority, we see action.

Politics is a field where the choice lies constantly between two blunders.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

Immanuel Kant famously claimed that 'he who wills the ends wills the means,' but he never spent much time in Washington.

The policy which has been adopted by the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of the Interior in dealing with these matters was submitted to me prior to the adoption thereof, and the policy decided upon and the subsequent acts have at all times had my entire approval.

This legislation is in the President's interest, if only the President could be brought to see it.

Once you start saying, 'Let's talk political, my own politics, my own aspirations,' it can become not just distracting in that it takes time, but it can become confusing and frustrating, and is this now a political agenda or a governmental agenda.

There is no Democratic or Republican way of cleaning the streets.

The court decided, based on its reading of our precedents, that the effects test of Lemon is violated whenever government action creates an identification of the state with a religion, or with religion in general, ...or when the effect of the governmental action is to endorse one religion over another, or to endorse religion in general.

For the first half of this century, High Court judges have been cautious to the point of timidity in expressing any criticism of governmental action; the independence of the judiciary has been of a decidedly subordinate character.

Hillary Clinton's time in the Senate indicates she is happier being a policy workhorse than a show horse.

President Trump needs a senator who will lead the charge for him.

In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.

It is no longer a matter of serious controversy whether the government should play a positive role in helping to maintain a high level of economic activity. What we debate nowadays is not the need for controlling business cycles, but rather the nature of governmental action, its timing and its extent.

Politics is the art of providing for the general welfare. It's the great human cooperative institution. It, in principle, is not competitive. It's an attempt of a community of people to get together in order to solve their problems …

If you're governor of a state, and you have nothing to say when the president attacks the people that you represent, you are complicit.

If you want to change things, politics is the best way to do that.

But, you know, once you're in government, very often you need to shoulder responsibility. I hope the new Spanish government will think about this and will therefore act accordingly. I really and sincerely hope so.

The difference between what all the people can do individually and the global consumption of nonrenewable resources is huge. The tension is... what will it take to get people to act in concert? There isn't any additive solution to the problem. It will be both governmental and social because that's the scale of the problem.

The campaign is over. It's time for the work of governing to begin.

If there is an ‘overabundance’ of an idea in the absence of direct governmental action - which there well might be when compared with some ideal state of public debate - then action disfavoring that idea might ‘un-skew,’ rather than skew, public discourse.

It is fundamental that the great powers of Congress to conduct war and to regulate the Nation's foreign relations are subject to the constitutional requirements of due process. The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit governmental action.