Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Melbourne, Lord

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Hospers, John

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

Burns, George

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

Baluch, Joy

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

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

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

10.

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

11.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

12.

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

Fred Thompson

13.

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

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.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

16.

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

17.

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

Herbert, A. P.

18.

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

Updike, John

19.

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

20.

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

Updike, John

21.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

22.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Mencken, H. L.

26.

In our consumer confidence surveys, we ask people whether they think government economic policy is good, fair, or poor. Increasingly, the answer we get is just plain laughter.

Schmiedeskamp, Jay

27.

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

Marshalov, Boris

28.

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

Bunting, Basil

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

32.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

33.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

34.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

35.

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

36.

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

Bob Wells

37.

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

38.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

39.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

40.

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

Themistocles

41.

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

Jackson, Andrew

42.

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

Melbourne, Lord

43.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

44.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

45.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

46.

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

47.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

48.

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

49.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

50.

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