Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

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

Updike, John

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

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

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

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

Hospers, John

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

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

Amsterdam, Maury

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

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

10.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

11.

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

H. L. Mencken

12.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

13.

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

Melbourne, Lord

14.

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

Durant, William J.

15.

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

Bunting, Basil

16.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

17.

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

Reagan, Ronald

18.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

19.

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

Dulles, John Foster

20.

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

21.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

22.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Jefferson, Thomas

23.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

24.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

25.

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

Truman, Harry S

26.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

27.

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

28.

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

Richard M. Nixon

29.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Franklin, Benjamin

30.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

31.

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

32.

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

33.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

34.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

35.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

36.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

37.

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

38.

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

Reston, James

39.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

43.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

44.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

45.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

46.

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

47.

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

Hume, David

48.

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

Voltaire

49.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

50.

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