Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

Bertrand Russell

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

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

Friedman, Milton

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

10.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

11.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

12.

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

13.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

14.

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

Burns, George

15.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

16.

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

Updike, John

17.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

18.

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

Fred Thompson

19.

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.

Baudrillard, Jean

20.

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

21.

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

Friedman, Milton

22.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

23.

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

Updike, John

24.

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

H. L. Mencken

25.

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

Reston, James

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.

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

Proverb, French

28.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

29.

Of the best rulers, The people only know that they exist; the next best they love and praise the next they fear; and the next they revile. When they do not command the people's faith, some will lose faith in them, and then they resort to oaths! But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done, the people all remark, We have done it ourselves.

Lao-Tzu

30.

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

31.

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

Bob Wells

32.

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

Caldwell, John S.

33.

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

Lawson, Nigel

34.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

35.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

36.

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

Gardner, John W.

37.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

38.

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

Baluch, Joy

39.

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

Cousin, Victor

40.

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

41.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

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

Melbourne, Lord

43.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

Shaw, George Bernard

44.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

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

46.

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

Hume, David

47.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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