Quotes about government

Fear is the foundation of most government.

— John Adams

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Maury Amsterdam

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

— Walter Bagehot

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

— Joy Baluch

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

— Honore De Balzac

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

— Frederic Bastiat

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.

— Jean Baudrillard

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

— Beverley Baxter

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

— Henry Ward Beecher

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.

— Baron William Henry Beveridge

A government must not waiver once it has chosen its course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

— Otto Von Bismarck

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

— Napoleon Bonaparte

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

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

— Napoleon Bonaparte

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

— Count Boytzwnburg

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

— Basil Bunting

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

— Edmund Burke

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

— George Burns

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

— John S. Caldwell

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

— Albert Camus

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.

— Thomas Carlyle

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

— Thomas Carlyle

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?

— Miguel De Cervantes

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

— John Jay Chapman

Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people.

— Grover Cleveland

The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are -- 1. Security to possessors; 2. Facility to acquirers; and, 3. Hope to all.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.

— Joseph Conrad

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

— Victor Cousin

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

— Davy Crockett

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.

— Richard Crossman

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

— William O. Douglas

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

— John Foster Dulles

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

— William J. Durant

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.

— Albert Einstein

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

— Albert Einstein

The less government we have the better.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

— Gerald R. Ford

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.

— Benjamin Franklin

An educated people can be easily governed.

— (Frederick II) Frederick The Great

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

— Milton Friedman

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

— Milton Friedman

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

— Milton Friedman

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

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.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

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

— John W. Gardner

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

— Jose Ortega Y Gasset

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

— William E. Gladstone

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

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

— Barry Goldwater

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

— Alexander Hamilton

All good government must begin at home.

— H. R. Haweis

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.

— Robert Heinlein

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

— A. P. Herbert

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

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

— John Hospers

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

— Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

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

— David Hume

Government can be bigger than any of the players on the field as a referee, but it has no right to become one of the players.

— Austin Igleheart

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

— Andrew Jackson

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.

— Andrew Jackson

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.

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office

— Thomas Jefferson

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

— Thomas Jefferson

A man without a vote is man without protection.

— Lyndon B. Johnson

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.

— Samuel Johnson

Safety of the state is the highest law.

— Justinian

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

— Murray Kempton

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

— John F. Kennedy

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

The supply of government exceeds demand.

— Lewis H. Lapham

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

— Nigel Lawson

Any cook should be able to run the country.

— Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

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.

— Leslie Baron Lever

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

— Rush Limbaugh

A Government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

— Abraham Lincoln

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

— Walter Lippmann

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.

— John Locke

Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.

— John Locke

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or in other words a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read and say and eat and drink and wear.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

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.

— James Madison

Every country has the government it deserves.

— Joseph De Maistre

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

— Boris Marshalov

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

— Lord Melbourne

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.

— H. L. Mencken

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.

— C. Wright Mills

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign. That is the essence of the problem.

— Comte De Mirabeau

It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Any party which takes credit for the rain must not be surprised if its opponents blame it for the drought.

— Dwight Whitney Morrow

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

— Bill Murray

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

— Cornelius Nepos

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.

— Richard M. Nixon

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.

— Peggy Noonan

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.

— P. J. O'Rourke

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

— Thomas Paine

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

— Pittacus

It is easy to rule over the good.

— Titus Maccius Plautus

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.

— Alexander Pope