Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

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

Limbaugh, Rush

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

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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

Welch, Robert

The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.

Sade, Marquis De

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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.

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

Hume, David

12.

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

Caldwell, John S.

13.

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Bastiat, Frederic

14.

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.

15.

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

16.

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

Baxter, Beverley

17.

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

Douglas, William O.

18.

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

19.

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

Rostand, Jean

20.

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

21.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

22.

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

H. L. Mencken

23.

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

24.

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

Voltaire

25.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

26.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

27.

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

28.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

37.

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

38.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

39.

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

Baluch, Joy

40.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

41.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

42.

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

Richard M. Nixon

43.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

44.

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

Friedman, Milton

45.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

46.

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

Melbourne, Lord

47.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

48.

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

49.

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

50.

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray