Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Hume, David

Best Quotes about Government

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

Jackson, Andrew

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

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

Murray, Bill

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

Jefferson, Thomas

10.

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

11.

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

Richard M. Nixon

12.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

13.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

14.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

19.

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

Douglas, William O.

20.

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

Welch, Robert

21.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

22.

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

Reagan, Ronald

23.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Voltaire

28.

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

Burns, George

29.

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

30.

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

Baluch, Joy

31.

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

32.

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

33.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

34.

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

Fred Thompson

35.

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

36.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

37.

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

38.

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

Einstein, Albert

39.

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

Marshalov, Boris

40.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

41.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

42.

In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?

Proverb, French

43.

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

Friedman, Milton

44.

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

45.

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

Rostand, Jean

46.

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

Gardner, John W.

47.

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

48.

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