Motivational Quotes

Government

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain.

- Herbert, A. P.

Best Quotes about Government

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

Locke, John

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

Baluch, Joy

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

Themistocles

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

Kocher, Gerhard

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

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

Friedman, Milton

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

10.

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

11.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

12.

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

13.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

14.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

15.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

16.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

17.

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

Updike, John

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Fred Thompson

21.

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

Dulles, John Foster

22.

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

Marshalov, Boris

23.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

24.

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain.

Herbert, A. P.

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Friedman, Milton

28.

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

George W. Bush

29.

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

30.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

31.

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.

32.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

33.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

34.

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

H. L. Mencken

35.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Murray, Bill

39.

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

40.

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

Durant, William J.

41.

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

42.

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

Cousin, Victor

43.

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

Bunting, Basil

44.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

45.

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

46.

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

Bertrand Russell

47.

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

48.

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

Reagan, Ronald

49.

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

Burns, George

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