Motivational Quotes

Government

That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.

- Pittacus

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

Rostand, Jean

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

Truman, Harry S

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

Hospers, John

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

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

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

Reagan, Ronald

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.

10.

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

Welch, Robert

11.

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

12.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

13.

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

Bunting, Basil

14.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

15.

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

16.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

20.

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

21.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

22.

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

23.

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

Fred Thompson

24.

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

Marshalov, Boris

25.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

26.

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

Themistocles

27.

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

Cousin, Victor

28.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

29.

That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.

Pittacus

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

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

Lawson, Nigel

35.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

Shaw, George Bernard

36.

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

Richard M. Nixon

37.

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

38.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

39.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

40.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

41.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

42.

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

Russell, Bertrand

43.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

44.

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

Reston, James

45.

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

Einstein, Albert

46.

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

Hume, David

47.

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

Baluch, Joy

48.

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

Updike, John

49.

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

50.

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

Jackson, Andrew