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

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

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

Reagan, Ronald

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Jefferson, Thomas

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright

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

Voltaire

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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

Marshalov, Boris

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

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

12.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

13.

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

14.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

15.

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

16.

You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

George W. Bush

17.

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.

18.

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

Friedman, Milton

19.

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

Voltaire

20.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

21.

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

22.

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

Cousin, Victor

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

26.

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

Crockett, Davy

27.

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

28.

The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

29.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

30.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

31.

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

32.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

33.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

34.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

35.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

36.

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

37.

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

Baxter, Beverley

38.

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

Updike, John

39.

For its part, Government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways -- to the voices of quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices, and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Nixon, Richard M.

40.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

41.

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

Kempton, Murray

42.

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

Caldwell, John S.

43.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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.

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

49.

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

Bertrand Russell

50.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.