Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Jefferson, Thomas

Best Quotes about Government

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

Einstein, Albert

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

Voltaire

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Madison, James

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

Pittacus

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

Kempton, Murray

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

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

Reston, James

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

Russell, Bertrand

10.

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

11.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

12.

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

13.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

14.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

15.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

16.

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

17.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

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

Melbourne, Lord

19.

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

20.

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

Proverb, French

21.

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

22.

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

23.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

24.

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

Voltaire

25.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

26.

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

Baluch, Joy

27.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

28.

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

Fred Thompson

29.

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

Herbert, A. P.

30.

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

31.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

32.

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

Baxter, Beverley

33.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

34.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

36.

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

Douglas, William O.

37.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

38.

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

39.

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

40.

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

41.

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

42.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

43.

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

44.

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

Hospers, John

45.

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

H. L. Mencken

46.

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

Durant, William J.

47.

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

48.

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

Gladstone, William E.

49.

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

50.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark