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

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

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Murray, Bill

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

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

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

Lawson, Nigel

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

10.

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

Rostand, Jean

11.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

12.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

13.

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

Voltaire

14.

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

Kempton, Murray

15.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

16.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

17.

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

Reagan, Ronald

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

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

20.

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

Updike, John

21.

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

Bunting, Basil

22.

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

Truman, Harry S

23.

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

Pittacus

24.

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

25.

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

Richard M. Nixon

26.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

Solon

27.

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

Friedman, Milton

28.

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.

29.

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

Updike, John

30.

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

Reston, James

31.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

32.

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

33.

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

Crockett, Davy

34.

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, then everybody disagrees.

Marshalov, Boris

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.

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

37.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

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

Hospers, John

39.

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

Themistocles

40.

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

Jackson, Andrew

41.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

42.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

43.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

44.

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

Friedman, Milton

45.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

46.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

47.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

48.

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.

49.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

50.

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

Einstein, Albert