Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Caldwell, John S.

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

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

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

Truman, Harry S

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

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

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

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

Voltaire

10.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

11.

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

Pittacus

12.

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

Reagan, Ronald

13.

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

Bertrand Russell

14.

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

15.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

16.

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

Baxter, Beverley

17.

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

George W. Bush

18.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

19.

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

Gladstone, William E.

20.

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

Updike, John

21.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

22.

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain.

Herbert, A. P.

23.

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

Reston, James

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

27.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

28.

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

29.

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

Gardner, John W.

30.

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

Proverb, French

31.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

32.

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.

Baudrillard, Jean

33.

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

34.

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

Friedman, Milton

35.

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

Jackson, Andrew

36.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

37.

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

38.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

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

40.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

41.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

42.

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

43.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

44.

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

45.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

46.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

47.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

48.

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

Durant, William J.

49.

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

50.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De