Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bob Wells

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Updike, John

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

Friedman, Milton

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

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

Friedman, Milton

10.

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

Proverb, French

11.

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

12.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

13.

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

Reagan, Ronald

14.

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

Douglas, William O.

15.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

16.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

21.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

22.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

23.

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

24.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

25.

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

H. L. Mencken

26.

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

Gardner, John W.

27.

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

28.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

29.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

30.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

31.

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

32.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

33.

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.

34.

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

35.

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

36.

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

Baluch, Joy

37.

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

Kempton, Murray

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

43.

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

44.

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

Voltaire

45.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

46.

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

47.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

48.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

49.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

50.

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