Motivational Quotes

Government

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

- Bertrand Russell

Best Quotes about Government

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

Gladstone, William E.

The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

Welch, Robert

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Madison, James

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

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

Gardner, John W.

The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.

Sade, Marquis De

10.

What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government.

President Barack Obama

11.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

12.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

Locke, John

13.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Jefferson, Thomas

14.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

15.

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

16.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

17.

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

Herbert, A. P.

18.

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

Caldwell, John S.

19.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

20.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

21.

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

Baxter, Beverley

22.

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate government action.

Russell, Bertrand

23.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

24.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

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

26.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Hume, David

27.

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright

28.

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

29.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

30.

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Crossman, Richard

31.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

32.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

33.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

34.

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

Melbourne, Lord

35.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Carlyle, Thomas

36.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

38.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

39.

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

Douglas, William O.

40.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

41.

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

Baluch, Joy

42.

The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.

Beecher, Henry Ward

43.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

44.

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

45.

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

46.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

47.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

48.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

49.

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