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

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

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

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

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

10.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

11.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

15.

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

Updike, John

16.

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

Einstein, Albert

17.

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

18.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

19.

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

Douglas, William O.

20.

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

21.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

22.

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

23.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

24.

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

Fred Thompson

25.

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

Bob Wells

26.

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

Bunting, Basil

27.

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

28.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

29.

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

George W. Bush

30.

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

31.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire

32.

For its part, Government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways -- to the voices of quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices, and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Nixon, Richard M.

33.

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.

34.

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

Reston, James

35.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Roosevelt, Theodore

36.

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

Herbert, A. P.

37.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

39.

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

Durant, William J.

40.

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

Reagan, Ronald

41.

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

Friedman, Milton

42.

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

Themistocles

43.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

44.

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

Cousin, Victor

45.

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

46.

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

Baluch, Joy

47.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

48.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

49.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.