Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Voltaire

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Bastiat, Frederic

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

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

10.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

11.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

12.

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

Bertrand Russell

13.

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

Bunting, Basil

14.

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

Richard M. Nixon

15.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

16.

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

Friedman, Milton

17.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

18.

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

Melbourne, Lord

19.

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

20.

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

Rostand, Jean

21.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

22.

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

23.

Madison, James

24.

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

Kempton, Murray

25.

The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

Welch, Robert

26.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

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.

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

29.

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

Updike, John

30.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

31.

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

32.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Updike, John

33.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

34.

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

Reston, James

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Crossman, Richard

39.

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

Einstein, Albert

40.

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

Herbert, A. P.

41.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

42.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

43.

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

Hume, David

44.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

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

Baxter, Beverley

46.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

47.

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

Marshalov, Boris

48.

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.

49.

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

Voltaire

50.

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

Proverb, French