Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Crockett, Davy

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Bob Wells

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

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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

Hume, David

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Voltaire

14.

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

15.

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

Baluch, Joy

16.

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

Truman, Harry S

17.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

18.

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

Gladstone, William E.

19.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

20.

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

Hospers, John

21.

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

Fred Thompson

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Lawson, Nigel

27.

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

Baxter, Beverley

28.

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

Burns, George

29.

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

Themistocles

30.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

31.

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

Douglas, William O.

32.

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

Rostand, Jean

33.

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

34.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

35.

But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.

Bunting, Basil

36.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Friedman, Milton

37.

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

Solon

38.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

39.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

40.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

41.

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

Caldwell, John S.

42.

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

43.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

44.

Any government is potentially the worst client in the world you could ever possibly want to have.

Thomas Heatherwick

45.

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

Voltaire

46.

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

Durant, William J.

47.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

48.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

49.

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

50.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon