Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Fred Thompson

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Bastiat, Frederic

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

Tuchman, Barbara

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

Hospers, John

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

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

Murray, Bill

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

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

10.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

11.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

12.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

13.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

14.

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

15.

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

Reagan, Ronald

16.

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

17.

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

Welch, Robert

18.

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

Baluch, Joy

19.

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

20.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

21.

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

Crockett, Davy

22.

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

23.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

24.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

25.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

29.

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

30.

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

Douglas, William O.

31.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

32.

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

33.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

34.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

35.

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

Baxter, Beverley

36.

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

Herbert, A. P.

37.

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

Dulles, John Foster

38.

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

39.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Updike, John

40.

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

Fred Thompson

41.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

42.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

43.

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

44.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

45.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

46.

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.

47.

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

Richard M. Nixon

48.

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

Friedman, Milton

49.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

50.

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