Motivational Quotes

Government

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

- Kennedy, John F.

Best Quotes about Government

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

Baxter, Beverley

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

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

Gardner, John W.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

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

Pittacus

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

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Einstein, Albert

10.

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

11.

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

Rostand, Jean

12.

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

13.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

14.

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

Burns, George

15.

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

Crockett, Davy

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

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

20.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

21.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

22.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

23.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

24.

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

Reston, James

25.

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

26.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

27.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

28.

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Bastiat, Frederic

29.

To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

Lawson, Nigel

30.

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

Friedman, Milton

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

35.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Baluch, Joy

41.

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

42.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

43.

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

Caldwell, John S.

44.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

45.

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

Bunting, Basil

46.

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

47.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

48.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

49.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

50.

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