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

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Updike, John

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

10.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

11.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

12.

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign. That is the essence of the problem.

Mirabeau, Comte De

13.

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

Crockett, Davy

14.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

15.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

16.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

17.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

18.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

19.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

20.

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

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.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

23.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

24.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

25.

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

Bertrand Russell

26.

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

Bob Wells

27.

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

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.

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

30.

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

31.

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

32.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

33.

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

Reagan, Ronald

34.

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

Hospers, John

35.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

36.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

37.

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

Burns, George

38.

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.

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

42.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

43.

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

44.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

45.

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

Murray, Bill

46.

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

47.

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

Pittacus

48.

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

49.

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

Rostand, Jean

50.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.