Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Boytzwnburg, Count

Best Quotes about Government

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

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

Welch, Robert

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Voltaire

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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 Athenians govern the Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife, govern me; your son governs you.

Themistocles

10.

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

Richard M. Nixon

11.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

12.

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

13.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

14.

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

15.

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

16.

The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

17.

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

18.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

19.

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

20.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

21.

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

Dulles, John Foster

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

25.

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

Fred Thompson

26.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

27.

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

28.

In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?

Proverb, French

29.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

31.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

32.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Mencken, H. L.

33.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Updike, John

34.

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

35.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

36.

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

37.

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

38.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

39.

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

Solon

40.

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

41.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

42.

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

Baxter, Beverley

43.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Roosevelt, Theodore

44.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

Shaw, George Bernard

45.

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

46.

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

Douglas, William O.

47.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

48.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

49.

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

50.

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Updike, John