Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Jefferson, Thomas

Best Quotes about Government

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

Themistocles

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

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Kempton, Murray

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

Amsterdam, Maury

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

10.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

11.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

12.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

13.

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Sir Winston Churchill

14.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

15.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

16.

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

Einstein, Albert

17.

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

18.

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

19.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

20.

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

Russell, Bertrand

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.

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

Solon

23.

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

Rostand, Jean

24.

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

Friedman, Milton

25.

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

26.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

27.

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

Jackson, Andrew

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.

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 man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

31.

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

Proverb, French

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Reagan, Ronald

35.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

36.

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

37.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

38.

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

39.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

40.

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

41.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

42.

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

Durant, William J.

43.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Lippmann, Walter

44.

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

Douglas, William O.

45.

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

Richard M. Nixon

46.

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

Gardner, John W.

47.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

48.

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

Reston, James

49.

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

Pittacus

50.

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