Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Hospers, John

Best Quotes about Government

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.

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

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Fred Thompson

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

10.

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

Reagan, Ronald

11.

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

12.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.

Baxter, Beverley

16.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

17.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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 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

20.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

22.

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

23.

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

Reston, James

24.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

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

26.

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

H. L. Mencken

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Updike, John

30.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

31.

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

Voltaire

32.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

33.

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

Richard M. Nixon

34.

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

Pittacus

35.

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

36.

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

Crockett, Davy

37.

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

38.

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

Gladstone, William E.

39.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

40.

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

Einstein, Albert

41.

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

George W. Bush

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.

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

44.

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

Burns, George

45.

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

Hume, David

46.

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

47.

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

Melbourne, Lord

48.

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

Rostand, Jean

49.

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

Caldwell, John S.

50.

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