Government Departments

Famous quotes containing the words government and/or departments:

    Vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous. To be convinced of this we need only represent, on the one hand, the numberless benefits which result from vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste; and on the other, the infinite evils which spring from the pride of certain nations, a laziness, poverty, a total neglect of everything.
    —Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755)

    Some of these men had become abstrusely entangled with the spying departments of other nations and would give an amusing jump if you came from behind and tapped them on the shoulder.
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)