Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Durant, William J.

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Hospers, John

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

Limbaugh, Rush

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

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 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.

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

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

10.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

11.

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

Reston, James

12.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

13.

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

Bob Wells

14.

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

Truman, Harry S

15.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

16.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

17.

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

John Kenneth Galbraith

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

George W. Bush

24.

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

Welch, Robert

25.

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

26.

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

Crockett, Davy

27.

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

Pittacus

28.

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

Bertrand Russell

29.

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

Melbourne, Lord

30.

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

31.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

32.

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Crossman, Richard

33.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

34.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

35.

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

Durant, William J.

36.

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

37.

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

Voltaire

38.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

39.

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

Lawson, Nigel

40.

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

Themistocles

41.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

42.

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

43.

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

Updike, John

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

47.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

48.

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