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

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

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

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

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

Melbourne, Lord

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

Jackson, Andrew

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

Russell, Bertrand

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

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

Themistocles

10.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

11.

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

12.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

13.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

14.

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

Richard M. Nixon

15.

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

Updike, John

16.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

17.

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

18.

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

Douglas, William O.

19.

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

Durant, William J.

20.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

21.

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

22.

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

Fred Thompson

23.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

24.

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

Caldwell, John S.

25.

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

Solon

26.

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

27.

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

28.

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

29.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

30.

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

Reagan, Ronald

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Voltaire

34.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life -- this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

O'Rourke, P. J.

35.

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

John Kenneth Galbraith

36.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

37.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

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

Welch, Robert

39.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

40.

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

Friedman, Milton

41.

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

Hospers, John

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.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

44.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

45.

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

46.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

47.

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

48.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

49.

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

50.

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