Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Jefferson, Thomas

Best Quotes about Government

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

Caldwell, John S.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

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

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

Durant, William J.

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

Reagan, Ronald

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

10.

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

11.

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

Gardner, John W.

12.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

13.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

14.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

15.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

16.

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

Reagan, Ronald

17.

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

H. L. Mencken

18.

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

Jackson, Andrew

19.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

20.

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

21.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

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

Bob Wells

25.

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

Richard M. Nixon

26.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

27.

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

Marshalov, Boris

28.

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

29.

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

30.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

31.

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

32.

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

Voltaire

33.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

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

35.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

36.

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

Dulles, John Foster

37.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

38.

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

Kempton, Murray

39.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

40.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

41.

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

Crockett, Davy

42.

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

43.

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

Reston, James

44.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

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

Herbert, A. P.

46.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Melbourne, Lord

50.

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.