Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Dulles, John Foster

Best Quotes about Government

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Limbaugh, Rush

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

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

Updike, John

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

10.

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

Themistocles

11.

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

Caldwell, John S.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

15.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

16.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

17.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

18.

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

Douglas, William O.

19.

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

20.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

21.

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

22.

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

H. L. Mencken

23.

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

Reston, James

24.

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

Solon

25.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

26.

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

Rostand, Jean

27.

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

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.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations. But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

33.

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

Reagan, Ronald

34.

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

35.

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.

36.

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

Lawson, Nigel

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

Pittacus

40.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

41.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

42.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

43.

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

Fred Thompson

44.

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

Welch, Robert

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Kempton, Murray

48.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

49.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

50.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John