Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Updike, John

Best Quotes about Government

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Baxter, Beverley

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

Themistocles

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

Russell, Bertrand

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

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

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

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Friedman, Milton

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

10.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

11.

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

Welch, Robert

12.

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

13.

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

Melbourne, Lord

14.

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

Hospers, John

15.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

16.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

17.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

18.

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.

19.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

20.

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

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.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

23.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

24.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

25.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

29.

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

Gladstone, William E.

30.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

31.

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

Truman, Harry S

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Baluch, Joy

35.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

36.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

37.

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

Herbert, A. P.

38.

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

39.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Hume, David

40.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

41.

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

42.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

43.

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

44.

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

George W. Bush

45.

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

Einstein, Albert

46.

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

47.

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

Reston, James

48.

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

49.

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

Gardner, John W.

50.

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

H. L. Mencken