Motivational Quotes

Government

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

- Bastiat, Frederic

Best Quotes about Government

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

John Kenneth Galbraith

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign. That is the essence of the problem.

Mirabeau, Comte De

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Franklin, Benjamin

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Jefferson, Thomas

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.

Baxter, Beverley

10.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Reagan, Ronald

11.

Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.

Baluch, Joy

12.

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

Shaw, George Bernard

13.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Richard M. Nixon

14.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

15.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

16.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

17.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.

19.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

20.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

21.

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Roosevelt, Theodore

22.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

23.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

24.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

25.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

26.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

27.

Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

Burns, George

28.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

29.

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain.

Herbert, A. P.

30.

In our consumer confidence surveys, we ask people whether they think government economic policy is good, fair, or poor. Increasingly, the answer we get is just plain laughter.

Schmiedeskamp, Jay

31.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

32.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

33.

The point to remember is what government gives it must first take away

Caldwell, John S.

34.

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, then everybody disagrees.

Marshalov, Boris

35.

To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

Lawson, Nigel

36.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

38.

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

Fred Thompson

39.

Government can be bigger than any of the players on the field as a referee, but it has no right to become one of the players.

Igleheart, Austin

40.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

41.

That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.

Pittacus

42.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

Solon

43.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

44.

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.

Baudrillard, Jean

45.

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

Melbourne, Lord

46.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Lippmann, Walter

47.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

48.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.