Motivational Quotes

Government

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

- Solon

Best Quotes about 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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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

Bunting, Basil

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Baluch, Joy

13.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

14.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

15.

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

Voltaire

16.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

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

18.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

19.

The point to remember is what government gives it must first take away

Caldwell, John S.

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

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

Lawson, Nigel

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Bob Wells

27.

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

28.

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

Richard M. Nixon

29.

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

30.

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

H. L. Mencken

31.

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

Rostand, Jean

32.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

33.

The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.

Beecher, Henry Ward

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Updike, John

37.

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

38.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

39.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

40.

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

Friedman, Milton

41.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

Gardner, John W.

42.

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

43.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

44.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

45.

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

Reston, James

46.

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