Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

Generosity is a part of my character, and I therefore hasten to assure this Government that I will never make an allegation of dishonesty against it wherever a simple explanation of stupidity will suffice.

Lever, Leslie Baron

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Friedman, Milton

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

10.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

11.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

12.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

13.

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

14.

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

Baluch, Joy

15.

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

16.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

17.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life -- this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

O'Rourke, P. J.

18.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

19.

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

20.

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

Bunting, Basil

21.

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

George W. Bush

22.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

23.

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

24.

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

Kempton, Murray

25.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

26.

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

Caldwell, John S.

27.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

31.

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

Douglas, William O.

32.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

33.

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

Richard M. Nixon

34.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

35.

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

H. L. Mencken

36.

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

Reagan, Ronald

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Bob Wells

40.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

41.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Proverb, French

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Voltaire

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.

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

50.

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