Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

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

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

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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 basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

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

H. L. Mencken

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Jefferson, Thomas

10.

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

Updike, John

11.

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

Welch, Robert

12.

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

Kempton, Murray

13.

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

14.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Pittacus

19.

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

20.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

22.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

23.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

24.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

25.

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

Hume, David

26.

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

Reagan, Ronald

27.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

28.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

Gladstone, William E.

31.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

32.

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

Baxter, Beverley

33.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

35.

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

36.

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

Hospers, John

37.

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

38.

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

Gardner, John W.

39.

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

40.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

41.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

42.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

43.

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

44.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

45.

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

46.

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

Fred Thompson

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Voltaire

50.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von