Motivational Quotes

Government

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

- Friedman, Milton

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

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

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Jackson, Andrew

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

Herbert, A. P.

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

Friedman, Milton

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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.

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

10.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

11.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Friedman, Milton

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Reston, James

15.

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

Pittacus

16.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

17.

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

18.

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

H. L. Mencken

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.

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

Gardner, John W.

21.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

22.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

23.

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

Kempton, Murray

24.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

28.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

29.

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

Hospers, John

30.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

31.

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

32.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

33.

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

34.

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

Hume, David

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Russell, Bertrand

38.

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

39.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

40.

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

Dulles, John Foster

41.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

42.

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

Einstein, Albert

43.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

44.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

45.

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

Marshalov, Boris

46.

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

47.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

48.

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

Murray, Bill

49.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

50.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.