Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Proverb, French

Best Quotes about Government

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

Murray, Bill

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Kempton, Murray

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

Updike, John

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

10.

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

11.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

12.

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

Cousin, Victor

13.

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

Baluch, Joy

14.

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

Proverb, French

15.

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

Durant, William J.

16.

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

Bunting, Basil

17.

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

Friedman, Milton

18.

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

Crockett, Davy

19.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

20.

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

Reston, James

21.

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

Lawson, Nigel

22.

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

Truman, Harry S

23.

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

24.

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

Reagan, Ronald

25.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

26.

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

Einstein, Albert

27.

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

Burns, George

28.

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

29.

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

Rostand, Jean

30.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

31.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

32.

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

33.

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

34.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

35.

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.

36.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

37.

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

Voltaire

38.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Bob Wells

42.

The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

Welch, Robert

43.

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

44.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

45.

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

Updike, John

46.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

47.

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

48.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

49.

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

Melbourne, Lord

50.

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

Fred Thompson