Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Truman, Harry S

Best Quotes about Government

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

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Roosevelt, Theodore

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

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

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

Updike, John

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Russell, Bertrand

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

Friedman, Milton

10.

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

Friedman, Milton

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Baxter, Beverley

14.

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.

Baudrillard, Jean

15.

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

16.

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

Gladstone, William E.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

21.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

22.

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.

23.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

24.

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

25.

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

Kempton, Murray

26.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

27.

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

Welch, Robert

28.

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

29.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

30.

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

Voltaire

31.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

32.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

33.

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

Douglas, William O.

34.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

35.

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

36.

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

H. L. Mencken

37.

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.

38.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

39.

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

40.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

41.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

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

43.

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

Melbourne, Lord

44.

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

Bunting, Basil

45.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

46.

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

Hospers, John

47.

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

Herbert, A. P.

48.

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

Solon

49.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

50.

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

Einstein, Albert