Jerry Brown Government Quotations

The government is a bunch of whores. Look at the people who pay to elect the government. Small farmers or cooperative activists do not pay anything other than a microscopic speck of the money spent to elect Congress.

Tragically, the federal government is violating federal law, which requires an assessment of cumulative impacts. This injures the citizens of Oakland, and every person in this country.

Government is the tool of the moneyed powers. That concentration of power is happening because Congress is bought off. The system is rigged. And anyone who because of some schoolbook imagery thinks we have some sort of a democratically elected government is not reading the signs of the times.

Government is not going to be there in the first 24 hours.

We are in a degenerate state of self-government. In fact, even to use the words self-government, is not only an exaggeration, it's a lie. It's a big lie!

The whole Jeffersonian ideal was that people are temporarily in government. Government is not the basic reality. People are. The private sector. And government is just a limited power to make things go better.

I'd shrink government in a minute, if I could shrink GM, Bank of America, and all these immoral corporations that operate by an undemocratic code, with no soul and no conscience.

The great problem with government is that it never goes bankrupt.

When I was Governor, Louis Kelso went out of his way to brief me. I was very impressed, but I was never able to get any of the economists in state government to give him the help his plan deserves.