Motivational Quotes

Government

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.

Best Quotes about Government

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

Bastiat, Frederic

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

Herbert, A. P.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

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

Pittacus

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

Truman, Harry S

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

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

Kempton, Murray

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

Voltaire

10.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

11.

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

Jackson, Andrew

12.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

13.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

14.

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

Bob Wells

15.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

16.

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

Melbourne, Lord

17.

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

Updike, John

18.

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

Hospers, John

19.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

20.

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

21.

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

Murray, Bill

22.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

23.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

24.

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

25.

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

George W. Bush

26.

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

27.

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

Caldwell, John S.

28.

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

29.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

30.

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

31.

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

Crockett, Davy

32.

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

Gardner, John W.

33.

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

Updike, John

34.

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

35.

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

Dulles, John Foster

36.

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.

37.

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

38.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

39.

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

40.

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

Richard M. Nixon

41.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

42.

If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to -- and you will -- leave, and be something else.

Noonan, Peggy

43.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Reagan, Ronald

44.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

45.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

46.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.