Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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

Voltaire

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Douglas, William O.

10.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

11.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

12.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

13.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

14.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Socrates

15.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

16.

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

17.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

19.

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

20.

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

Pittacus

21.

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

Burns, George

22.

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.

23.

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

24.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

25.

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

Caldwell, John S.

26.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

27.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

28.

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Sir Winston Churchill

29.

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

30.

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

Fred Thompson

31.

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

Marshalov, Boris

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

35.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

36.

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

37.

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

Themistocles

38.

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

Updike, John

39.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Generosity is a part of my character, and I therefore hasten to assure this Government that I will never make an allegation of dishonesty against it wherever a simple explanation of stupidity will suffice.

Lever, Leslie Baron

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

47.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

48.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

49.

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

50.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life -- this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

O'Rourke, P. J.