Motivational Quotes

Government

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

- Jefferson, Thomas

Best Quotes about Government

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

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

Gladstone, William E.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

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

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

Murray, Bill

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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

Douglas, William O.

10.

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

11.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

12.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

13.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

14.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

15.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

16.

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

17.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

Any government is potentially the worst client in the world you could ever possibly want to have.

Thomas Heatherwick

19.

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

Solon

20.

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

21.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

22.

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

23.

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

Richard M. Nixon

24.

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

25.

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

Gardner, John W.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

29.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

30.

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

H. L. Mencken

31.

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

Friedman, Milton

32.

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

33.

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

Einstein, Albert

34.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

35.

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

Voltaire

36.

Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

Burns, George

37.

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

Reston, James

38.

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

Bob Wells

39.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

40.

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

Melbourne, Lord

41.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

Baxter, Beverley

46.

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

Russell, Bertrand

47.

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

48.

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