Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Friedman, Milton

Best Quotes about Government

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Dulles, John Foster

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

10.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

11.

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

12.

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

Rostand, Jean

13.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

14.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

15.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

16.

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

17.

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

Truman, Harry S

18.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

19.

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

Reagan, Ronald

20.

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

Voltaire

21.

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

Bob Wells

22.

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

Baxter, Beverley

23.

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

24.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

25.

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

Bunting, Basil

26.

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

H. L. Mencken

27.

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

28.

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

Burns, George

29.

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

Durant, William J.

30.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

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.

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Einstein, Albert

35.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

36.

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

37.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

38.

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

39.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

40.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

41.

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.

42.

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

43.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Reston, James