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

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

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

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

10.

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

Updike, John

11.

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

Hume, David

12.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

13.

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

Burns, George

14.

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

15.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

16.

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

Updike, John

17.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

18.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

19.

For its part, Government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways -- to the voices of quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices, and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Nixon, Richard M.

20.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

21.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

22.

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

Melbourne, Lord

23.

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

24.

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

Jackson, Andrew

25.

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

26.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

28.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

34.

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

George W. Bush

35.

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

36.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

40.

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

H. L. Mencken

41.

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

42.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

43.

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

44.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

45.

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

Richard M. Nixon

46.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

47.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.