Open Government Quotes

1. "The public sector certainly includes the Department of Labor. Those are jobs that are available. They are open and they are good paying jobs. The government as a whole has been actually retrenching under President Clinton's leadership."
Author: Alexis Herman

2. "Come on," he droned, "I've been ordered to take you down to the bridge. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't."He turned and walked back to the hated door."Er, excuse me," said Ford following after him, "which government owns this ship?"Marvin ignored him."You watch this door," he muttered, "it's about to open again. I can tell by the intolerable air of smugness it suddenly generates."
Author: Douglas Adams

3. "God does hear and answer prayers. I have never doubted that fact. From childhood, at my mother's knee where I first learned to pray; as a young man in my teens; as a missionary in foreign lands; as a father; as a Church leader; as a government official, I know without question that it is possible for men and women to reach out in humility and prayer and tap that Unseen Power; to have prayers answered. "Man does not stand along, or, at least, he need not stand alone. Prayer will open doors; prayer will remove barriers; prayer will ease pressures; prayer will give inner peace and comfort during times of strain and stress and difficult. Thank God for prayer"
Author: Ezra Taft Benson

4. "The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa, or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge of the wants or feelings of the day laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. ... unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes..."
Author: James Madison

5. "Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political system…The central feature of the American constitutional system—the separation of powers—exacerbates many of these problems. The governments of the US were not designed to be efficient or powerful, but to be tolerable and malleable. Those who designed these arrangements always assumed that the federal government would exercise few and limited powers."
Author: James Q. Wilson

6. "I am pleased to report that Texas is known for having one of the strongest set of open government laws in our Nation. And ever since that experience, I have long believed that our federal government could use 'a little Texas sunshine.'"
Author: John Cornyn

7. "The citizens of New Hampshire expect and deserve a government as clean as our mountain streams and as open as our blue skies. Today let us pledge together to make this government - the people's government - clean, open and honest."
Author: John Lynch

8. "Pilfering was common in Communist China's state-owned enterprises, as the Party secretaries were slack in guarding properties that belonged to the government and poorly paid workers felt it fair compensation for their low pay. The practice was so widespread that it was an open secret. The workers joked about it and called it "Communism," which in Chinese translation means "sharing property." Pg. 390"
Author: Nien Cheng

9. "Now, it's true that some of the protesters are oddly dressed or have silly-sounding slogans, which is inevitable given the open character of the events. But so what? I, at least, am a lot more offended by the sight of exquisitely tailored plutocrats, who owe their continued wealth to government guarantees, whining that President Obama has said mean things about them than I am by the sight of ragtag young people denouncing consumerism."
Author: Paul Krugman

10. "When a country goes to war, men can no longer operate free and open laboratories. The Government would like to know what you are doing. Businesses became corporations, the individual thinker became unpatriotic."
Author: Samantha Hunt

11. "Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong."
Author: Terence McKenna

Open Government Quotes Pictures