Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Updike, John

Best Quotes about Government

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

H. L. Mencken

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.

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

Baxter, Beverley

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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

Bertrand Russell

10.

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

11.

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

12.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

13.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

14.

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

15.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

16.

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

John Kenneth Galbraith

17.

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

Truman, Harry S

18.

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.

19.

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

Reagan, Ronald

20.

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

21.

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

Voltaire

22.

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

Marshalov, Boris

23.

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

24.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

25.

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

Kempton, Murray

26.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

27.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Hospers, John

31.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

32.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Herbert, A. P.

36.

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

George W. Bush

37.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

38.

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

Jackson, Andrew

39.

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

40.

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

Welch, Robert

41.

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

Cousin, Victor

42.

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

43.

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

Burns, George

44.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

45.

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

Solon

46.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

47.

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign. That is the essence of the problem.

Mirabeau, Comte De

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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