Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Murray, Bill

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

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

Herbert, A. P.

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

Updike, John

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

Themistocles

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

10.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

11.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

12.

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

13.

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

Reston, James

14.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

15.

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

16.

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

Welch, Robert

17.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

18.

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

Crockett, Davy

19.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

20.

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

Douglas, William O.

21.

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

22.

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

Caldwell, John S.

23.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

24.

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

Voltaire

25.

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

Proverb, French

26.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

27.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

28.

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

H. L. Mencken

29.

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

30.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

31.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

32.

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

33.

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

Melbourne, Lord

34.

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

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

Burns, George

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Reagan, Ronald

41.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

42.

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

Updike, John

43.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

44.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Solon

49.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

50.

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