Best Government Quotes to Inspire, Uplift & Motivate You Every Day

“There is often, in the affairs of government, more efficiency and wisdom in non-action than in action.”

“It is critical that Democratic candidates, whether they are in New Jersey, or Virginia, or anywhere, emphasize the fact that we can be trusted, and can bring fiscal integrity to our state, local, and national government.”

“Since its inception, the government has broken and coerced treaties with hundreds of Native American tribes. And this is even worse when you realize that the native peoples of this land are negotiating for land that is, by all common sense and elementary school logic, their land.”

“In China, Vietnam, Russia and several former Soviet states, the dominant social networks are run by local companies whose relationship with the government actually constrains the empowering potential of social networks.”

“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”

“For me, the definition of a patriot is someone who is willing to constantly question the government; that's what separates us from other countries.”

“Louisiana's spicy, colorful politics have saddled our state with a reputation for tolerating lax ethical standards in government.”

“When members of a certain party concoct various devious schemes to suppress votes, purposely misinform potential voters, spread vile untrue filth about certain candidates, play the race, gender and religious cards, and literally tamper with vote tallies, then we are not a truly representative government!”

“The happiness of society is the end of government.”

“I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone.'”

“Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talks of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.”

“What we've seen in government for so often is that people have been shady - about their roles, hiding things, not releasing things.”

“As a governor, I am naturally inclined to focus on the domestic side of protecting the United States.”

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

“Optimism is the ultimate definition of a leader. A leader has to look optimistically at what is ahead while not ignoring the challenges that must be overcome. Those challenges are in government, politics, world leadership, and even in community life.”

“Beijing's Olympics were very grand - they were trying to throw a party for the world, but the hosts didn't enjoy it. The government didn't care about people's feelings because it was trying to create an image.”

“Democracy passes into despotism.”

“If taxation without consent is robbery, the United States government has never had, has not now, and is never likely to have, a single honest dollar in its treasury. If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized.”

“In the individualist ideology, a man is responsible for his wife and children. This relegates women to domestic roles as wives and mothers protected by their menfolk, or silences them as special interest harpies demanding government benefits that will destroy individualist men.”

“Government frequently has a problem recognizing perception versus reality.”

“A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.”

“If I had been elected president in 1948, history would be vastly different. I believe we would have stemmed the growth of Big Government, which had begun with the New Deal and culminated with the Great Society.”

“A limited government is much more likely to be a competent government.”

“The greater part of the governments on earth may be termed monarchical aristocracies, or hereditary dominions independent of the people.”

“Every Indian outbreak that I have ever known has resulted from broken promises and broken treaties by the government.”

“Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion?”

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.”

“Money is power, and in that government which pays all the public officers of the states will all political power be substantially concentrated.”

“Numerically, half of our high-ranking government officials should be women, and half should be men. And yet the division between the sexes is highly disproportionate in favour of men.”

“If you ask the government to solve all of your problems, it's a bit like asking your wife to cook and clean, to raise the children, to hold down a second job to help with the family finances, to keep her parents happy and well and keep your parents happy and well, and to also - to do the lawn and clean the gutters.”

“Under the leaden sway of Alexander III's government, the silence of the graveyard prevailed. Russian society, equally discouraged by the collapse of all hopes for peaceful reforms and by the apparent ineffectiveness of the revolutionary movement, was in the grip of a mood of depression and resignation.”

“What's been happening in Iraq, what young Americans wearing flak jackets, helmets and flight suits have done is... created the circumstances under which Iraq can become our closest ally in that part of the world and still have a representative government. And that's going to be a very good thing considering what's going on in that neighborhood.”

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

“The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them.”

“Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.”

“When the Congress was in power, the educated - especially the engineers - were jobless and they could not even sell pakodas and the UPA government could not bestow attention. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi created employment opportunities for the educated youth.”

“To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.”

“If the states and territories do not sign up to fundamental reform, then my message is equally simple: we will take this reform plan to the people at the next election - along with a referendum by or at that same election to give the Australian Government all the power it needs to reform the health system.”

“It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.”

“Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.”

“The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.”

“A government of laws, and not of men.”

“An individual's refusal to carry out the criminal acts of his government sets the stage, in the most effective way possible, for the attempt to demonstrate the criminal nature of these acts.”

“It is manifest that the only security against the tyranny of the government lies in forcible resistance to the execution of the injustice; because the injustice will certainly be executed, unless it be forcibly resisted.”

“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”

“It makes sense to have cameras in places where terrorism and crime are of particular concern - such as in Times Square or near major bridges and tunnels. It would be more troubling to learn, however, that the government has focused cameras on the front doors of our homes just to keep track of our comings and goings.”

“Americans no longer look to government for economic security; rather, they look to their portfolios.”

“Put simply, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but they don't pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay, or as a percentage of what the government needs to close the deficit gap.”

“We are ready to end fascism once and for all, even in spite of the Republican government.”

“The responsibility for good government lies not just with governments themselves but also with every other part of the system they operate in, including media, non-governmental organisations and the public.”

“I have been up to see the Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving.”

“Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.”

“The mistakes made by Congress wouldn't be so bad if the next Congress didn't keep trying to correct them.”

“My father was a government officer and for him, the ultimate dream was to see me become an IAS officer.”

“We must stand up for the principle of parliamentary democracy and not allow the government's failure in the Brexit process to be a licence for the U.K. to crash out of the E.U. without an agreement.”

“You don't have good government unless you have good people working in government.”

“America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.”

“The human spirit is stronger than any government or institution.”

“How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”

“You know, we have three branches of government. We have a House. We have a Senate. We have a President.”

“The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.”

“Government and other scientists have identified hundreds of chemicals that are linked to diseases in small concentrations and that are unregulated in drinking water or policed at limits that still pose serious risks.”

“My particular historical vantage point is a product of my upbringing as that odd duck, a native Washingtonian whose parents were not in government. The first presidential transition of my sentient lifetime, Kennedy's, I remember vividly.”

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

“Charities should not become the junior partner in the welfare state; whether or not they provide services funded by Government or, indeed, receive grants from Government, they must remain independent and focused on their mission.”

“Sir, I wish to understand the true principles of the Government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.”

“As more people rely on government programs, the harder it becomes to conduct the necessary reforms to preserve them to help our society's most vulnerable.”

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

“We had a strategy to dollarize. It was to take the assets of the Central Bank against the national government, transfer those securities to the market, and get dollars.”

“We cannot watch another family lose everything - risking their lives and the lives of the first responders sent to rescue them - because the flood insurance program's seal of government approval fooled them into thinking they were safe. That's more than wrong: it's immoral.”

“As a condition for entry into the Chinese market, Apple had to agree to the Chinese government's censorship criteria in vetting the content of all iPhone apps available for download on devices sold in mainland China.”

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

“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

“Lacking a profit motive, workers in the government by and large have a different work ethic from those in private industry. When they could make one call, federal workers take a meeting. When they could find an answer on the Internet, they form a study committee. Instead of appointing one supervisor, they appoint five.”

“But no one has yet succeeded in reducing the size or scope of the federal government.”

“I think if you open the door to government control of television, then you let in a host of questions about rights.”

“I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.”

“How any government could promote the Vardy academies in the North-East of England is absolutely beyond me. Tony Blair defends them on grounds of diversity, but it should be unthinkable in the 21st century to have a school whose head of science believes the world is less than 10,000 years old.”

“Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”

“When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.”

“A tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one, and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by government.”

“Our government has failed us. From the billion-dollar bailouts to the 'stimulus' package that failed to stimulate to the government takeover of health care, you cried 'Stop!'... but the Democratic Majority in Washington has refused to listen.”

“A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion.”

“Those who cry out that the government should 'do something' never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing.”

“As director of CIA, I was responsible for everything done in the agency's name, and it didn't matter whether that was done by an agency employee, a government contractor, a liaison service on our behalf, or a source on our behalf.”

“Our nation is built on the bedrock principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

“Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.”

“To think that we have to depend on some of the most dependent people in our population to fund our government when corporations won't even pay their fair share.”

“When you have a new government assume power, everyone, without exception, has to work for the benefit of the common good.”

“Financial crises require governments.”

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

“I respect very much the role of the media in our society; I think they can be very, very helpful. They serve as a very useful check, sort of a watchdog over the actions of the government, and I respect that.”

“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!”

“If the government wants to do social policy, it should not be done in a quasi-public company. If you have a mortgage guarantee company which is done by the U.S. government, it should be guaranteed by the originators, i.e., the shareholder.”

“If the government is going to mandate levels and punish schools for failing, they should send that money to the school system.”

“I learnt a lot in government, and I've learnt a lot since leaving government. The kind of journey of being in government is that you start at your most popular and least capable, and you end at your most capable and least popular.”

“It is bad policy to regulate everything... where things may better regulate themselves and can be better promoted by private exertions; but it is no less bad policy to let those things alone which can only be promoted by interfering social power.”

“They say not everyone can be MGR. I agree. MGR is a revolutionary. Not in a 1,000 years can there be another MGR. If anyone says he will be the next MGR, he is insane. But I have the confidence that I can give the government that MGR gave to the people of Tamil Nadu.”

“There are good people and bad people in all organizations fundamentally however, when you look at the basis of the Tea Party it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with an economic recovery. It has to do with limiting the role of our government in our lives. It has to do with free markets.”

“Government alone cannot solve the problems we deal with in our correctional facilities, treatment centers, homeless shelters and crisis centers - we need our faith-based and community partners.”