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

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

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

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

Wallis, W. Allen

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

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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

George W. Bush

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

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

Voltaire

10.

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

Themistocles

11.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

16.

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

17.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

18.

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

Updike, John

19.

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

Solon

20.

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

21.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

22.

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

23.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

24.

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

Reagan, Ronald

25.

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

26.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

27.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

28.

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

Crockett, Davy

29.

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

Jackson, Andrew

30.

Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

Burns, George

31.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

32.

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

33.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

34.

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

35.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

36.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

37.

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

38.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

39.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

40.

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

Richard M. Nixon

41.

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

Herbert, A. P.

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

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

Gladstone, William E.

45.

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

46.

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

Hospers, John

47.

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

48.

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

Gardner, John W.

49.

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

50.

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

Rostand, Jean