Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Best Quotes about Government

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

Caldwell, John S.

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

Pittacus

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

Douglas, William O.

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

Themistocles

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

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

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

Russell, Bertrand

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

10.

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

Rostand, Jean

11.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

Reston, James

15.

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

16.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Friedman, Milton

21.

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

22.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

23.

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

Burns, George

24.

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

Voltaire

25.

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

26.

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

Marshalov, Boris

27.

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

Updike, John

28.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

29.

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

30.

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

Friedman, Milton

31.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

32.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

33.

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

Herbert, A. P.

34.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

36.

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

37.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

38.

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

Solon

39.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

40.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

41.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

42.

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.

Baudrillard, Jean

43.

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

44.

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright

45.

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

46.

Any government is potentially the worst client in the world you could ever possibly want to have.

Thomas Heatherwick

47.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

48.

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

49.

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