Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Limbaugh, Rush

Best Quotes about Government

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

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

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

Bunting, Basil

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

Crockett, Davy

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

Pittacus

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

10.

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

Baluch, Joy

11.

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

Douglas, William O.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

15.

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

H. L. Mencken

16.

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

Proverb, French

17.

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

18.

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

Fred Thompson

19.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

20.

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

Bertrand Russell

21.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

22.

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

23.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

24.

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

Russell, Bertrand

25.

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

Themistocles

26.

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

Durant, William J.

27.

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

Kempton, Murray

28.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Herbert, A. P.

32.

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

33.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

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

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.

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

Truman, Harry S

40.

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

Rostand, Jean

41.

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

Bob Wells

42.

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

43.

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

Friedman, Milton

44.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

45.

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

46.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

47.

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

Gladstone, William E.

48.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

49.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.