Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Melbourne, Lord

Best Quotes about Government

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

George W. Bush

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

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

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

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

Kocher, Gerhard

10.

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

11.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

12.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

13.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

14.

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

Updike, John

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

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

19.

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

20.

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

21.

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

22.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

23.

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

Reston, James

24.

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

Bunting, Basil

25.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

26.

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

Hume, David

27.

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.

28.

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

Durant, William J.

29.

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

Updike, John

30.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

31.

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

32.

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

Bertrand Russell

33.

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

Themistocles

34.

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

35.

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

Caldwell, John S.

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

Reagan, Ronald

40.

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

41.

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

Gardner, John W.

42.

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

Truman, Harry S

43.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

44.

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

Welch, Robert

45.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

46.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

47.

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

48.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

49.

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

Fred Thompson

50.

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