Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Caldwell, John S.

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

H. L. Mencken

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

Gardner, John W.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Voltaire

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

10.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

11.

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

Reagan, Ronald

12.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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.

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

15.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

16.

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

Melbourne, Lord

17.

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

18.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

19.

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

George W. Bush

20.

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

21.

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

Voltaire

22.

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

Bob Wells

23.

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

24.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

25.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

26.

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

Friedman, Milton

27.

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

Jackson, Andrew

28.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

29.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

31.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

32.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

33.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

38.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

39.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

40.

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

Lawson, Nigel

41.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

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

Hume, David

43.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

44.

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

45.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

46.

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

Updike, John

47.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

48.

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

49.

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

Themistocles

50.

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

Thomas Heatherwick