Motivational Quotes

Government

All good government must begin at home.

- Haweis, H. R.

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

Douglas, William O.

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

Caldwell, John S.

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.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

10.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

11.

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

Reston, James

12.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Hume, David

13.

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

Bob Wells

14.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?

Proverb, French

19.

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

Baluch, Joy

20.

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

Bertrand Russell

21.

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

22.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

23.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

24.

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

25.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

26.

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

Gladstone, William E.

27.

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

28.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

29.

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

Russell, Bertrand

30.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

35.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

36.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

37.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

38.

In our consumer confidence surveys, we ask people whether they think government economic policy is good, fair, or poor. Increasingly, the answer we get is just plain laughter.

Schmiedeskamp, Jay

39.

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

Reagan, Ronald

40.

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

41.

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

42.

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

Richard M. Nixon

43.

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

Welch, Robert

44.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

45.

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

46.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

47.

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

48.

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

Reagan, Ronald

49.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

50.

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