Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Durant, William J.

Best Quotes about Government

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

Rostand, Jean

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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.

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

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

Bob Wells

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

10.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

11.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

12.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Melbourne, Lord

13.

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

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.

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

Updike, John

16.

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

17.

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

18.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Jackson, Andrew

22.

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

Bunting, Basil

23.

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

Reston, James

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Herbert, A. P.

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

35.

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

Fred Thompson

36.

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.

37.

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

Kempton, Murray

38.

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

39.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

40.

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

Reagan, Ronald

41.

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

42.

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

Richard M. Nixon

43.

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

Durant, William J.

44.

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

Russell, Bertrand

45.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

46.

Generosity is a part of my character, and I therefore hasten to assure this Government that I will never make an allegation of dishonesty against it wherever a simple explanation of stupidity will suffice.

Lever, Leslie Baron

47.

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

Hume, David

48.

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

Bertrand Russell

49.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

50.

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