Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Friedman, Milton

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Bertrand Russell

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.

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

Voltaire

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

Gladstone, William E.

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

10.

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

11.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

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.

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

14.

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

Jackson, Andrew

15.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

16.

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

17.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

18.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

19.

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

Bunting, Basil

20.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

21.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Carlyle, Thomas

25.

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

Burns, George

26.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

27.

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

Hume, David

28.

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

29.

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

Reagan, Ronald

30.

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

Einstein, Albert

31.

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

32.

Locke, John

33.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

34.

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

Dulles, John Foster

35.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Voltaire

36.

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

Pittacus

37.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

38.

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

Updike, John

39.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

40.

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

41.

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

42.

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

Baxter, Beverley

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Bob Wells

46.

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

Herbert, A. P.

47.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

48.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

49.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

50.

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