Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Bastiat, Frederic

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

Melbourne, Lord

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

10.

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

Herbert, A. P.

11.

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

Gardner, John W.

12.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

13.

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

14.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

15.

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

Themistocles

16.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

17.

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

Reagan, Ronald

18.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

19.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

20.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

21.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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.

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

24.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

25.

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

26.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

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

Lawson, Nigel

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

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

Rostand, Jean

31.

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

Jackson, Andrew

32.

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

Solon

33.

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

Baxter, Beverley

34.

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

35.

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Crossman, Richard

36.

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

Marshalov, Boris

37.

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

Russell, Bertrand

38.

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

Truman, Harry S

39.

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.

40.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

41.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

42.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

43.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

44.

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

Einstein, Albert

45.

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

46.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

47.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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