Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

H. L. Mencken

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

Durant, William J.

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Crockett, Davy

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

Truman, Harry S

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

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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

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.

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

Tuchman, Barbara

12.

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

Welch, Robert

13.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

14.

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

Dulles, John Foster

15.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

16.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

17.

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

Reagan, Ronald

18.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

19.

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

20.

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

George W. Bush

21.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

22.

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

Themistocles

23.

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

Updike, John

24.

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

Melbourne, Lord

25.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Douglas, William O.

29.

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

30.

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

Murray, Bill

31.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

32.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

33.

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

Gladstone, William E.

34.

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Bastiat, Frederic

35.

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

Voltaire

36.

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

Bertrand Russell

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

40.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

41.

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

42.

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

Richard M. Nixon

43.

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

44.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

45.

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

Lawson, Nigel

46.

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

Herbert, A. P.

47.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.