Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Jefferson, Thomas

Best Quotes about Government

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

Dulles, John Foster

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

Bastiat, Frederic

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

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

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

You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

George W. Bush

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

Jefferson, Thomas

10.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

11.

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

Updike, John

12.

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

Friedman, Milton

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.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

15.

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

16.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

17.

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

Proverb, French

18.

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

19.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

20.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

21.

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.

22.

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

Jackson, Andrew

23.

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

Caldwell, John S.

24.

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

Bunting, Basil

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

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.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

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

36.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

37.

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

38.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

39.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

40.

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

Truman, Harry S

41.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

42.

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

43.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

44.

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

Pittacus

45.

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

Welch, Robert

46.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

47.

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

Reagan, Ronald

48.

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

Cousin, Victor

49.

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

50.

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign. That is the essence of the problem.

Mirabeau, Comte De