Motivational Quotes

Government

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

- Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

Best Quotes about Government

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

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

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

Durant, William J.

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

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

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

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

Murray, Bill

10.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

11.

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

Hospers, John

12.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire

13.

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

14.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

15.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

16.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

17.

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

Douglas, William O.

18.

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

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.

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

Baluch, Joy

21.

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

22.

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

Rostand, Jean

23.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

Gardner, John W.

24.

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

25.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

26.

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

Bunting, Basil

27.

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

28.

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

Reston, James

29.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

30.

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

31.

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

Updike, John

32.

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

33.

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

Bertrand Russell

34.

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

35.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

36.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

Shaw, George Bernard

37.

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

Reagan, Ronald

38.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

39.

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray

40.

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