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

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

Amsterdam, Maury

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

Russell, Bertrand

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

Dulles, John Foster

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

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

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

Herbert, A. P.

What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government.

President Barack Obama

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

10.

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

H. L. Mencken

11.

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

Melbourne, Lord

12.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

13.

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

14.

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

Kempton, Murray

15.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

16.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

17.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

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

19.

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

Themistocles

20.

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

Burns, George

21.

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

Updike, John

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

25.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

26.

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

Douglas, William O.

27.

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

Voltaire

28.

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

Bunting, Basil

29.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

30.

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

31.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

32.

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

33.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Welch, Robert

38.

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

Baluch, Joy

39.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

40.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

41.

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

Reston, James

42.

Of the best rulers, The people only know that they exist; the next best they love and praise the next they fear; and the next they revile. When they do not command the people's faith, some will lose faith in them, and then they resort to oaths! But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done, the people all remark, We have done it ourselves.

Lao-Tzu

43.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

48.

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

49.

All good government must begin at home.