Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Themistocles

Best Quotes about Government

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

George W. Bush

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

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

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

Bastiat, Frederic

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Reagan, Ronald

10.

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

11.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

12.

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

Friedman, Milton

13.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

14.

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

15.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Fred Thompson

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.

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

21.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Socrates

22.

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

Gladstone, William E.

23.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

24.

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

Voltaire

25.

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

Solon

26.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Bertrand Russell

30.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

31.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

32.

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

Lawson, Nigel

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

36.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

37.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

38.

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

Baxter, Beverley

39.

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

40.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

41.

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

Jackson, Andrew

42.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

43.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

44.

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

45.

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

Bob Wells

46.

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

47.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

48.

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

49.

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

Reston, James

50.

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