Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

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

Jackson, Andrew

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

Baluch, Joy

10.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

11.

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

Updike, John

12.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

13.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

14.

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

Reagan, Ronald

15.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

16.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

17.

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

18.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

19.

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

20.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

21.

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

22.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

23.

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

Marshalov, Boris

24.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

25.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

26.

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

Einstein, Albert

27.

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

Voltaire

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

Lawson, Nigel

31.

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

Douglas, William O.

32.

Any government is potentially the worst client in the world you could ever possibly want to have.

Thomas Heatherwick

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.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

35.

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

Richard M. Nixon

36.

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

Welch, Robert

37.

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

Reagan, Ronald

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Fred Thompson

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Hospers, John

45.

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

46.

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Crossman, Richard

47.

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

48.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Socrates

49.

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

50.

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

Reston, James