Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Updike, John

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

Reagan, Ronald

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Sir Winston Churchill

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 auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

10.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Mencken, H. L.

11.

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

Durant, William J.

12.

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

Voltaire

13.

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

Russell, Bertrand

14.

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

Jackson, Andrew

15.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

19.

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

H. L. Mencken

20.

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

Fred Thompson

21.

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

Friedman, Milton

22.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

23.

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

Solon

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

29.

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

30.

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

Rostand, Jean

31.

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

Truman, Harry S

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Douglas, William O.

35.

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

Einstein, Albert

36.

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

Pittacus

37.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

38.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

39.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

Shaw, George Bernard

40.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

41.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

42.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

43.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

44.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

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

46.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

47.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

48.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

49.

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

50.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark