Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Richard M. Nixon

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

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

Rostand, Jean

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Hospers, John

10.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Solon

18.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

19.

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

20.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

21.

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

22.

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Roosevelt, Theodore

23.

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

Gladstone, William E.

24.

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

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

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

Truman, Harry S

27.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

28.

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

George W. Bush

29.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

31.

Locke, John

32.

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

Lawson, Nigel

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

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

Marshalov, Boris

36.

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

Pittacus

37.

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

38.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

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

Bunting, Basil

40.

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

Fred Thompson

41.

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.

42.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

47.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

48.

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

49.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

50.

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

Caldwell, John S.