Motivational Quotes

Government

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

- Chapman, John Jay

Best Quotes about Government

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Bastiat, Frederic

For its part, Government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways -- to the voices of quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices, and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Nixon, Richard M.

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

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

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

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

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

10.

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

Durant, William J.

11.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

12.

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

Welch, Robert

13.

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

14.

Of the best rulers, The people only know that they exist; the next best they love and praise the next they fear; and the next they revile. When they do not command the people's faith, some will lose faith in them, and then they resort to oaths! But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done, the people all remark, We have done it ourselves.

Lao-Tzu

15.

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

16.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

20.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

21.

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

22.

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

23.

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

Voltaire

24.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

25.

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

26.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

27.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

28.

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

29.

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

Pittacus

30.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

31.

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

Hume, David

32.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

33.

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

H. L. Mencken

34.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

35.

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

Burns, George

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

42.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

43.

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

44.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

45.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

46.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

47.

If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to -- and you will -- leave, and be something else.

Noonan, Peggy

48.

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

Herbert, A. P.

49.

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

Truman, Harry S

50.

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