Motivational Quotes

Government

Fear is the foundation of most government.

- Adams, John

Best Quotes about Government

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

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

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

Douglas, William O.

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

Marshalov, Boris

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

Burns, George

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Proverb, French

12.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

13.

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

14.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

15.

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

Crockett, Davy

16.

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

17.

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

Caldwell, John S.

18.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

19.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

20.

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

Gladstone, William E.

21.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

22.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

23.

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

24.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

25.

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

26.

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

H. L. Mencken

27.

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

Gardner, John W.

28.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

29.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

30.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

31.

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

32.

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

Updike, John

33.

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

Cousin, Victor

34.

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

Baluch, Joy

35.

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

36.

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

Einstein, Albert

37.

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

Jackson, Andrew

38.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

39.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

40.

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

41.

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Updike, John

42.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

43.

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

Kempton, Murray

44.

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

45.

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

Lawson, Nigel

46.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

George W. Bush

50.

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