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

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

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

Welch, Robert

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

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

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

Themistocles

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

Friedman, Milton

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

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

10.

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

11.

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

H. L. Mencken

12.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

13.

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

Truman, Harry S

14.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

15.

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

16.

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

Bunting, Basil

17.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

18.

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

19.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

20.

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

Reston, James

21.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

22.

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

Burns, George

23.

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

24.

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

Bob Wells

25.

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

Melbourne, Lord

26.

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

27.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

28.

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

29.

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

30.

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

Douglas, William O.

31.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Jefferson, Thomas

32.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

33.

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

Solon

34.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

35.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

36.

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

37.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

38.

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

39.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Russell, Bertrand

43.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

44.

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

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.

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

48.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

49.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

50.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German