Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Melbourne, Lord

Best Quotes about Government

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

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

Baluch, Joy

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

Burns, George

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

Caldwell, John S.

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

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

Updike, John

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

10.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

11.

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

12.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

13.

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

Reagan, Ronald

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Cousin, Victor

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

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

Voltaire

20.

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

21.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

22.

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

Crockett, Davy

23.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

24.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

25.

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

Baxter, Beverley

26.

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

Marshalov, Boris

27.

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

28.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

29.

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

Einstein, Albert

30.

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

George W. Bush

31.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

32.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

Gardner, John W.

33.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Socrates

34.

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

H. L. Mencken

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

39.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

40.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

41.

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

42.

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

Bunting, Basil

43.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

47.

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

48.

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

49.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

50.

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