Motivational Quotes

Government

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

- Nepos, Cornelius

Best Quotes about Government

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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

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

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

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

Douglas, William O.

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

Friedman, Milton

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

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

10.

Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

Burns, George

11.

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

Reston, James

12.

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

Rostand, Jean

13.

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

14.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

15.

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

16.

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

17.

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

Bob Wells

18.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

19.

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

20.

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

21.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

22.

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

23.

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

Lawson, Nigel

24.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

25.

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

Jackson, Andrew

26.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

27.

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

Truman, Harry S

28.

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

Proverb, French

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

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

Voltaire

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

35.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

36.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

37.

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

38.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

39.

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

Russell, Bertrand

40.

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

41.

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

Reston, James

42.

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

43.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

44.

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

Marshalov, Boris

45.

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

Herbert, A. P.

46.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

47.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

48.

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

Gardner, John W.

49.

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

H. L. Mencken

50.

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