Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Melbourne, Lord

Best Quotes about Government

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

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

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.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

Douglas, William O.

10.

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.

11.

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

12.

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

Themistocles

13.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Jackson, Andrew

17.

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

18.

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

George W. Bush

19.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

20.

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

Murray, Bill

21.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

22.

What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government.

President Barack Obama

23.

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

24.

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

25.

But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.

Bunting, Basil

26.

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

27.

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

28.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

31.

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.

Baudrillard, Jean

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.

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

Updike, John

34.

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

Cousin, Victor

35.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

36.

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

Reagan, Ronald

37.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

38.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

39.

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

H. L. Mencken

40.

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

41.

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

Crockett, Davy

42.

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

43.

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

Voltaire

44.

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

45.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

46.

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

47.

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

Richard M. Nixon

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Russell, Bertrand