Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Crockett, Davy

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

Reston, James

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

Cousin, Victor

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

H. L. Mencken

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

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

Rostand, Jean

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

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

Bastiat, Frederic

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

11.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

12.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

13.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

14.

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

Lawson, Nigel

15.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

16.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Hume, David

17.

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

Gladstone, William E.

18.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

19.

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

20.

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

Melbourne, Lord

21.

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

Proverb, French

22.

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

Baluch, Joy

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

27.

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

Updike, John

28.

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

29.

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

Fred Thompson

30.

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

31.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

32.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

33.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

34.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

35.

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

Durant, William J.

36.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

37.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

38.

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

39.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

40.

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

Caldwell, John S.

41.

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

Marshalov, Boris

42.

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

Voltaire

43.

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

44.

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

Truman, Harry S

45.

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

46.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

47.

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

Reagan, Ronald

48.

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

Einstein, Albert

49.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

50.

Generosity is a part of my character, and I therefore hasten to assure this Government that I will never make an allegation of dishonesty against it wherever a simple explanation of stupidity will suffice.

Lever, Leslie Baron