Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Russell, Bertrand

Best Quotes about Government

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

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

Jackson, Andrew

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

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

Hume, David

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Melbourne, Lord

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

Cousin, Victor

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

10.

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

Dulles, John Foster

11.

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

Pittacus

12.

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

Reagan, Ronald

13.

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

Welch, Robert

14.

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

Bob Wells

15.

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

Kempton, Murray

16.

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

Gladstone, William E.

17.

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

Themistocles

18.

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

Marshalov, Boris

19.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

20.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

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

22.

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

Murray, Bill

23.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

24.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

26.

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.

27.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

28.

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

29.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

30.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

31.

In our consumer confidence surveys, we ask people whether they think government economic policy is good, fair, or poor. Increasingly, the answer we get is just plain laughter.

Schmiedeskamp, Jay

32.

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

Friedman, Milton

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.

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

George W. Bush

35.

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

Crockett, Davy

36.

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

Lawson, Nigel

37.

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

38.

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

Bertrand Russell

39.

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

Baluch, Joy

40.

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

Voltaire

41.

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

Friedman, Milton

42.

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

43.

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

Burns, George

44.

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

Solon

45.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

46.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

47.

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.

48.

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

Hospers, John

49.

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

50.

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