Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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

Updike, John

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Welch, Robert

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Hospers, John

10.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

11.

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

Reston, James

12.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

13.

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

14.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

15.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Carlyle, Thomas

16.

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

17.

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

Updike, John

18.

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

19.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

20.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

21.

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

Russell, Bertrand

22.

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

Gardner, John W.

23.

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

24.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

25.

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

Gladstone, William E.

26.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

27.

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

George W. Bush

28.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

29.

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

Voltaire

30.

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

Fred Thompson

31.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

32.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

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.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

35.

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

Burns, George

36.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

37.

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

Reagan, Ronald

38.

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

Reagan, Ronald

39.

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

40.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

41.

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

Pittacus

42.

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

43.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

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

Durant, William J.

45.

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

46.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

47.

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

Friedman, Milton

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Truman, Harry S