Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Douglas, William O.

Best Quotes about Government

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

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

Durant, William J.

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.

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

Dulles, John Foster

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

16.

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

Updike, John

17.

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

18.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

19.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

20.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

21.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

22.

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

Voltaire

23.

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

24.

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

Lawson, Nigel

25.

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

Hume, David

26.

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

27.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

28.

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

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

31.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

32.

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

Proverb, French

33.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

34.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

35.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

36.

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

37.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Friedman, Milton

42.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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.

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

Reagan, Ronald

45.

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

Updike, John

46.

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

47.

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

Cousin, Victor

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Richard M. Nixon