Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Fred Thompson

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

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

Einstein, Albert

If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to -- and you will -- leave, and be something else.

Noonan, Peggy

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

10.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

Lawson, Nigel

15.

Of the best rulers, The people only know that they exist; the next best they love and praise the next they fear; and the next they revile. When they do not command the people's faith, some will lose faith in them, and then they resort to oaths! But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done, the people all remark, We have done it ourselves.

Lao-Tzu

16.

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

Baxter, Beverley

17.

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

George W. Bush

18.

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

Bertrand Russell

19.

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

20.

Jackson, Andrew

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

25.

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

Reston, James

26.

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.

27.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

28.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

29.

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

Melbourne, Lord

30.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

31.

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

32.

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

Truman, Harry S

33.

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

34.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

35.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

36.

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

H. L. Mencken

37.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

38.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

39.

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

Cousin, Victor

40.

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

41.

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

Proverb, French

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

45.

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

46.

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

Welch, Robert

47.

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

Murray, Bill

48.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

49.

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

Updike, John

50.

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