Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

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

Burns, George

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

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

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

Reagan, Ronald

10.

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

11.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

12.

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

H. L. Mencken

13.

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

Herbert, A. P.

14.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

18.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

19.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

20.

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

Marshalov, Boris

21.

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

22.

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

Proverb, French

23.

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

Pittacus

24.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

25.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

26.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

27.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Updike, John

31.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

32.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

33.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

34.

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

Truman, Harry S

35.

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

Gladstone, William E.

36.

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

Reston, James

37.

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

Hume, David

38.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

39.

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

40.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

41.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

42.

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

43.

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray

44.

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

Melbourne, Lord

45.

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

46.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

47.

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

Russell, Bertrand

48.

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

Baluch, Joy

49.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

50.

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