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

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

Truman, Harry S

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

Voltaire

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

Bertrand Russell

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

Bastiat, Frederic

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

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

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

Murray, Bill

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

10.

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

11.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

12.

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

Reagan, Ronald

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

16.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

22.

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

George W. Bush

23.

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

Proverb, French

24.

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

Pittacus

25.

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

26.

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

Reston, James

27.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

28.

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

Solon

29.

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

30.

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

Melbourne, Lord

31.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

32.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

33.

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

34.

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

35.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

36.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

37.

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

38.

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

Rostand, Jean

39.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

40.

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

Gladstone, William E.

41.

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

42.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

43.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Lippmann, Walter

44.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

45.

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

46.

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

H. L. Mencken

47.

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

48.

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

Burns, George

49.

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