Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Douglas, William O.

Best Quotes about Government

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Melbourne, Lord

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

Hume, David

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

10.

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

Burns, George

11.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

13.

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

14.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

15.

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

Caldwell, John S.

16.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

17.

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

18.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

19.

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

20.

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

Murray, Bill

21.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

22.

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

Marshalov, Boris

23.

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

Pittacus

24.

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

Herbert, A. P.

25.

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

Richard M. Nixon

26.

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray

27.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

28.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

29.

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

Proverb, French

30.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

31.

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

Durant, William J.

32.

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

Bertrand Russell

33.

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

H. L. Mencken

34.

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

Dulles, John Foster

35.

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

36.

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

Friedman, Milton

37.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

38.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

39.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

47.

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

Baxter, Beverley

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.

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