Motivational Quotes

Government

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

- Chapman, John Jay

Best Quotes about Government

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

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Amsterdam, Maury

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

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

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

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

10.

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

11.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

12.

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

13.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

14.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Gardner, John W.

22.

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

23.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

24.

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

25.

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

Reston, James

26.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

27.

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.

28.

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.

29.

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

Lawson, Nigel

30.

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

Reagan, Ronald

31.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

32.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

33.

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

34.

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

H. L. Mencken

35.

In our consumer confidence surveys, we ask people whether they think government economic policy is good, fair, or poor. Increasingly, the answer we get is just plain laughter.

Schmiedeskamp, Jay

36.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

37.

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

38.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

39.

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

40.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

41.

You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

George W. Bush

42.

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

Updike, John

43.

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