Motivational Quotes

Government

The Athenians govern the Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife, govern me; your son governs you.

- Themistocles

Best Quotes about Government

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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

Reston, James

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

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

Crockett, Davy

Government can be bigger than any of the players on the field as a referee, but it has no right to become one of the players.

Igleheart, Austin

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

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

Reston, James

10.

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

Truman, Harry S

11.

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

Bertrand Russell

12.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

16.

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

Gladstone, William E.

17.

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

18.

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

Caldwell, John S.

19.

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

20.

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

Fred Thompson

21.

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

Marshalov, Boris

22.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Pittacus

28.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

29.

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

30.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

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

Melbourne, Lord

32.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

33.

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

34.

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

Updike, John

35.

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

36.

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

Voltaire

37.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

38.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

39.

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.

40.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

41.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

42.

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

Jackson, Andrew

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.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

45.

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

46.

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

Reagan, Ronald

47.

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.

48.

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

Gardner, John W.

49.

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

Friedman, Milton

50.

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

Burns, George