Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Fred Thompson

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

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

H. L. Mencken

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

Kempton, Murray

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

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Limbaugh, Rush

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

Wallis, W. Allen

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

Russell, Bertrand

10.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

11.

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

Dulles, John Foster

12.

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

Richard M. Nixon

13.

The point to remember is what government gives it must first take away

Caldwell, John S.

14.

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

15.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

16.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

17.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

18.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

19.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

20.

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

Gladstone, William E.

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Burns, George

24.

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

Voltaire

25.

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

26.

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

George W. Bush

27.

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

Lawson, Nigel

28.

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

Melbourne, Lord

29.

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

30.

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

31.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

32.

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

33.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

34.

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

35.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

36.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

37.

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

38.

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

Pittacus

39.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

42.

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

Einstein, Albert

43.

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

Solon

44.

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

45.

The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

46.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

50.

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