Motivational Quotes

Government

The supply of government exceeds demand.

- Lapham, Lewis H.

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

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

Jackson, Andrew

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 art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Douglas, William O.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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

10.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

11.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

12.

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

Reston, James

13.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

14.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

15.

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

Kempton, Murray

16.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

17.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

18.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

19.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

20.

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

Welch, Robert

21.

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

Hume, David

22.

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

Updike, John

23.

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

24.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

25.

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

Friedman, Milton

26.

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

Marshalov, Boris

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.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

32.

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

Cousin, Victor

33.

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

Baxter, Beverley

34.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

35.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Mencken, H. L.

36.

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

37.

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

Caldwell, John S.

38.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

39.

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

40.

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

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.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

43.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

44.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

45.

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

Hospers, John

46.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

47.

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

Gardner, John W.

48.

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

49.

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

H. L. Mencken

50.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire