Motivational Quotes

Government

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

- Reagan, Ronald

Best Quotes about Government

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

Bertrand Russell

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

The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations. But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

Themistocles

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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.

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

11.

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

Updike, John

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Richard M. Nixon

16.

Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.

Baxter, Beverley

17.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

18.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire

19.

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

20.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

21.

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

Hume, David

22.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

23.

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

24.

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

Fred Thompson

25.

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

26.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

27.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

28.

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

Melbourne, Lord

29.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

30.

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

Cousin, Victor

31.

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

32.

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

Jackson, Andrew

33.

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

Bob Wells

34.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

35.

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

H. L. Mencken

36.

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

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.

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

Updike, John

39.

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

Pittacus

40.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

41.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

42.

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

Rostand, Jean

43.

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

Einstein, Albert

44.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

45.

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

Reagan, Ronald

46.

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

Gladstone, William E.

47.

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

Reston, James

48.

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

Friedman, Milton

49.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

50.

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