Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Fred Thompson

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.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

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

Murray, Bill

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

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

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

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

10.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

11.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

12.

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

George W. Bush

13.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

14.

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

Reston, James

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

19.

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

Welch, Robert

20.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

21.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

22.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

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

Douglas, William O.

27.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

28.

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.

29.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

30.

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

31.

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

Friedman, Milton

32.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

33.

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

Proverb, French

34.

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

35.

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

Gardner, John W.

36.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

37.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

38.

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

39.

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

Updike, John

40.

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

Crockett, Davy

41.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

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

Bertrand Russell

43.

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

Jackson, Andrew

44.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Burns, George

48.

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

Durant, William J.

49.

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

50.

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

Truman, Harry S