Motivational Quotes

Government

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

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

Herbert, A. P.

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Baxter, Beverley

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

Fred Thompson

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

In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?

Proverb, French

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

Marshalov, Boris

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

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

Truman, Harry S

10.

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.

11.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

12.

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

Dulles, John Foster

13.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

14.

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

Baluch, Joy

15.

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

Pittacus

16.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

17.

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

18.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

19.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

20.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

21.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

22.

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

Reston, James

23.

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

24.

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

Jackson, Andrew

25.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

26.

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

27.

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Crossman, Richard

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Hume, David

31.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

32.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

33.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

34.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

35.

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

Lawson, Nigel

36.

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

37.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

38.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

39.

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

Themistocles

40.

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

Hospers, John

41.

But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.

Bunting, Basil

42.

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

Melbourne, Lord

43.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

44.

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.

45.

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

46.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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