Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bonaparte, Napoleon

Best Quotes about Government

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

Friedman, Milton

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

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

Friedman, Milton

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.

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

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

10.

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

11.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

12.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

13.

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

Reagan, Ronald

14.

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

15.

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

Reagan, Ronald

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

19.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

20.

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

Reston, James

21.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

22.

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

Voltaire

23.

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

H. L. Mencken

24.

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

Updike, John

25.

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

Kempton, Murray

26.

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

Hume, David

27.

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

28.

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

Jackson, Andrew

29.

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

Themistocles

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Douglas, William O.

33.

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

Russell, Bertrand

34.

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

Marshalov, Boris

35.

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

Gardner, John W.

36.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

37.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

38.

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

39.

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

Dulles, John Foster

40.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

41.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

42.

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

Herbert, A. P.

43.

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

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.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

46.

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

Proverb, French

47.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

48.

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

49.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

50.

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.