Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Durant, William J.

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Gardner, John W.

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

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

Updike, John

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

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

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

Dulles, John Foster

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

10.

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

11.

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

Bob Wells

12.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

16.

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

17.

The point to remember is what government gives it must first take away

Caldwell, John S.

18.

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.

19.

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

Russell, Bertrand

20.

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

Welch, Robert

21.

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

22.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

23.

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

Crockett, Davy

24.

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

25.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

26.

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

Bunting, Basil

27.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

28.

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

Melbourne, Lord

29.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

30.

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

31.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

32.

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

Voltaire

33.

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

34.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

35.

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

Bertrand Russell

36.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

37.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

38.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

39.

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.

40.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

41.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

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

Reagan, Ronald

43.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

44.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

45.

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

Richard M. Nixon

46.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

Solon

47.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

48.

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

Durant, William J.

49.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

50.

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