Quotes about government

In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?

— French Proverb

Office without pay makes thieves.

— German Proverb

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.

— Sir Walter Raleigh

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

— Ronald Reagan

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

— Ronald Reagan

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

— Ronald Reagan

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

— Ronald Reagan

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

— James Reston

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

— James Reston

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

— Will Rogers

Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.

— Will Rogers

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

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

— Theodore Roosevelt

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.

— Theodore Roosevelt

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

— Jean Rostand

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.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

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

— Bertrand Russell

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.

— Marquis De Sade

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.

— Jay Schmiedeskamp

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.

— George Bernard Shaw

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.

— George Bernard Shaw

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.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

— Socrates

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

— Solon

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

— Themistocles

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

— Henry David Thoreau

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.

— Henry David Thoreau

That government is best which governs least.

— Henry David Thoreau

This American government -- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.

— Henry David Thoreau

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.

— Count Leo Tolstoy

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

— Lord Justice Topes

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

— Harry S Truman

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

— Barbara Tuchman

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

— Mark Twain

We have the best government that money can buy.

— Mark Twain

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

— John Updike

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

— John Updike

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— W. Allen Wallis

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.

— George Washington

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

— George Washington

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

— Robert Welch

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

— Harold Wilson

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

— Sir Henry Wotton

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

— Gerhard Kocher

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

— Gerhard Kocher

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

— Frank Zappa

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

— Thomas Jefferson

Rex 84 is a martial law plan that allows the federal government to destroy the separation of powers.

— James Dye

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

— P. J. O'Rourke

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

— Plato