Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Friedman, Milton

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

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

Jackson, Andrew

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

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

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

Reagan, Ronald

10.

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

Bertrand Russell

11.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

12.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

17.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

18.

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

19.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

20.

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

Gardner, John W.

21.

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

22.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

23.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

24.

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

25.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

26.

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

27.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

28.

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

Murray, Bill

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

31.

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

32.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

33.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

34.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

35.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

36.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

37.

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

38.

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

Updike, John

39.

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

Kempton, Murray

40.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

41.

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

Hospers, John

42.

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

Einstein, Albert

43.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

44.

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

Cousin, Victor

45.

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

Solon

46.

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

47.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

48.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

49.

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

Gladstone, William E.

50.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew