Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Roosevelt, Theodore

Best Quotes about Government

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

Friedman, Milton

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.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

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

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

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

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

Gardner, John W.

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

10.

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

11.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

12.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

13.

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

14.

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

Voltaire

15.

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

Einstein, Albert

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Reston, James

19.

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

Bertrand Russell

20.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

21.

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Crossman, Richard

22.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

23.

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

Welch, Robert

24.

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.

25.

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

Truman, Harry S

26.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

27.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

28.

Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.

Baxter, Beverley

29.

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

Fred Thompson

30.

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

Hume, David

31.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

32.

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

Rostand, Jean

33.

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

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.

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

Themistocles

36.

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

37.

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

Shaw, George Bernard

38.

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

Hospers, John

39.

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

Solon

40.

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

Reagan, Ronald

41.

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

42.

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

H. L. Mencken

43.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

44.

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

Caldwell, John S.

45.

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

Durant, William J.

46.

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

47.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

48.

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

49.

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

Crockett, Davy

50.

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