Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Douglas, William O.

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

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

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.

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

Welch, Robert

10.

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

Updike, John

11.

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

12.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

13.

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

Bunting, Basil

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Richard M. Nixon

17.

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

H. L. Mencken

18.

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

Reston, James

19.

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

Caldwell, John S.

20.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

21.

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

Friedman, Milton

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Murray, Bill

25.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

26.

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

27.

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

Russell, Bertrand

28.

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

29.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

30.

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

Fred Thompson

31.

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright

32.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

33.

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

34.

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

Marshalov, Boris

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.

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

Kempton, Murray

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.

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

Bertrand Russell

39.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

40.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

41.

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

42.

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

43.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

44.

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

Melbourne, Lord

45.

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

46.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

47.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

48.

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

49.

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

Updike, John

50.

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