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

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

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

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.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Bunting, Basil

18.

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

Murray, Bill

19.

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

Fred Thompson

20.

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

Welch, Robert

21.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

22.

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

23.

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

Pittacus

24.

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

25.

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

Baxter, Beverley

26.

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

Gardner, John W.

27.

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

Melbourne, Lord

28.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Updike, John

29.

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

30.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

32.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

33.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

34.

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

Reston, James

35.

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

36.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Dulles, John Foster

40.

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

Updike, John

41.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

42.

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

43.

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

44.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

45.

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.

46.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Voltaire

47.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

48.

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

Einstein, Albert

49.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

50.

Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.

Baluch, Joy