Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Fred Thompson

Best Quotes about Government

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

Kempton, Murray

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

Caldwell, John S.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

10.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

11.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

12.

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

13.

The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

14.

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

Jackson, Andrew

15.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Durant, William J.

20.

Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.

Baluch, Joy

21.

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

Marshalov, Boris

22.

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

Murray, Bill

23.

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

Themistocles

24.

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

Reagan, Ronald

25.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

26.

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

George W. Bush

27.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

28.

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

Hospers, John

29.

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

Hume, David

30.

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

Gladstone, William E.

31.

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

Updike, John

32.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

33.

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.

34.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

35.

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

36.

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

Voltaire

37.

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

38.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

39.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

40.

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

H. L. Mencken

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Dulles, John Foster

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

47.

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

48.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

49.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

50.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)