Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Reston, James

Best Quotes about Government

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

George W. Bush

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

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

Hospers, John

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

Proverb, French

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

Fred Thompson

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

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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

Douglas, William O.

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.

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

Gladstone, William E.

11.

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

12.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

13.

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

14.

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

Friedman, Milton

15.

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

16.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

17.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

18.

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

Marshalov, Boris

19.

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

Updike, John

20.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

21.

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

22.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

23.

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

24.

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

Richard M. Nixon

25.

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

Melbourne, Lord

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

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

28.

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

Bob Wells

29.

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

30.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

31.

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

Themistocles

32.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

33.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

34.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

36.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

37.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

38.

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.

39.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

40.

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

Reston, James

41.

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

Caldwell, John S.

42.

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