Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Updike, John

Best Quotes about Government

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

Bertrand Russell

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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

Gardner, John W.

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

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

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

Baxter, Beverley

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

10.

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

Bunting, Basil

11.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

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

Hume, David

13.

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

14.

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

Updike, John

15.

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

Lawson, Nigel

16.

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

Kempton, Murray

17.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

18.

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

19.

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

Jackson, Andrew

20.

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

21.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

22.

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

23.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Mencken, H. L.

24.

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

25.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

26.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

28.

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

Friedman, Milton

29.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

30.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

31.

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

Hospers, John

32.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

33.

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

34.

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

Bob Wells

35.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

36.

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

37.

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

Proverb, French

38.

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

39.

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

Gladstone, William E.

40.

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

41.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

42.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

43.

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

44.

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

Fred Thompson

45.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

46.

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

Friedman, Milton

47.

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

48.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

49.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

50.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay