Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Solon

Best Quotes about Government

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

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

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

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

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

Rostand, Jean

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

Fred Thompson

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

10.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

11.

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

12.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

13.

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

14.

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.

15.

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

Gardner, John W.

16.

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign. That is the essence of the problem.

Mirabeau, Comte De

17.

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

H. L. Mencken

18.

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

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.

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

Herbert, A. P.

21.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

22.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

23.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

24.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

25.

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

Shaw, George Bernard

26.

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

27.

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

Richard M. Nixon

28.

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

Lawson, Nigel

29.

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

30.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

George W. Bush

34.

Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.

Baluch, Joy

35.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

36.

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

37.

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

Reston, James

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

43.

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

Baxter, Beverley

44.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Welch, Robert

49.

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

Durant, William J.

50.

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

Bastiat, Frederic