Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Einstein, Albert

Best Quotes about Government

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

Crockett, Davy

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

Bastiat, Frederic

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

Pittacus

The Athenians govern the Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife, govern me; your son governs you.

Themistocles

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

10.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

11.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

12.

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

Hume, David

13.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

14.

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

Reston, James

15.

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

16.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

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.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

19.

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

20.

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

Melbourne, Lord

21.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Welch, Robert

26.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

27.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

28.

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

Bunting, Basil

29.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

30.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

31.

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

Bob Wells

32.

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

Caldwell, John S.

33.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

34.

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

35.

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

Durant, William J.

36.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire

37.

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.

38.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

39.

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, then everybody disagrees.

Marshalov, Boris

40.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

41.

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

Cousin, Victor

42.

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

43.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

44.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

45.

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

H. L. Mencken

46.

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

Bertrand Russell

47.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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