Motivational Quotes

Government

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

- Chapman, John Jay

Best Quotes about Government

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

Jackson, Andrew

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

Pittacus

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

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

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

H. L. Mencken

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.

10.

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

Reagan, Ronald

11.

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

Russell, Bertrand

12.

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

Lawson, Nigel

13.

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

14.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

15.

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

16.

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

Baluch, Joy

17.

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

Douglas, William O.

18.

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

Reston, James

19.

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

Cousin, Victor

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Crockett, Davy

23.

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

24.

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

Herbert, A. P.

25.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

26.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

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

Fred Thompson

28.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

29.

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

Hospers, John

30.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

31.

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

Reagan, Ronald

32.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

33.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

34.

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

35.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

36.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

37.

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

38.

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

Welch, Robert

39.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

40.

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

Voltaire

41.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

42.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

43.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

44.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

45.

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

46.

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.

47.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

48.

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

49.

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

Friedman, Milton

50.

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