Top 100 Best Government Quotes
#2. Lets tell young people the best books are yet to written; the best painting, the best government the best of everything is yet to be done by them.
John Erskine
#3. We have the best government that money can buy.
Mark Twain
#4. Democracy, though slowly attained and never by revolutionary jumps, is the best government on earth when it tries to make all its citizens aristocrats. But not when it guillontines whoever is individual, superior, or just different.
Peter Viereck
#5. I would prefer being in a hard battle; however, I will be satisfied with whatever happens to me in this war, if only the country comes out of this peril safe and to the satisfaction of the finest and best government on earth.
Knute Nelson
#6. Jefferson repeatedly said that the best government was the smallest government, that governments are not the masters of the people, but the servants of the people governed.
Ronald Reagan
#7. The best government is the least government. In some areas, I'm libertarian. I don't subscribe to any one party; they are all bad.
Wayne Rogers
#8. The best government rests on the people, and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority.
George Bancroft
#9. It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing.
Wendell Berry
#10. That is the best Government, which best provides for war.
Algernon Sidney
#12. The Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats. They believe that 'the best government is that which governs least,' and that which governs least is no government at all.
Benjamin Tucker
#13. That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
#14. The best government in the world, the best religion, the best traditions of any people, depend upon the good or evil of the men and women who administer them.
Pearl S. Buck
#16. The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
Voltaire
#17. Always remember, Son, the best boss is the one who bosses the least. Whether it's cattle, or horses, or men; the least government is the best government.
Ralph Moody
#18. All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy.
Leo Tolstoy
#19. Scoundrels will be corrupt and unconcerned citizens apathetic under even the best constitution.
William Earl Maxwell
#20. Government exists to create and preserve conditions in which people can translate their ideas into practical reality. In the best of times, much is lost in translation. But we try.
Gerald R. Ford
#21. Since no one but you can know what's best for you, government control can't make your life better.
Harry Browne
#22. Televisions and radios are locked on government frequencies - it is a serious crime to listen to a foreign broadcast. As a result, North Koreans think that they live in the best country in the world and that, as difficult as their lives may be, everybody else has it much worse.
Barbara Demick
#23. The best way for the Government to maintain its credit is to pay as it goes-not by resorting to loans, but by keeping out of debt-through an adequate income secured by a system of taxation, external or internal, or both.
William McKinley
#24. [T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore ... never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.
Thomas Jefferson
#25. Printing currency for foreigners to buy is the best racket a government can get into.
Lee Child
#26. I am very confident that we will be able to convince all the stakeholders - the shareholders, the governments and the employees, that this is in their best interests.
Lakshmi Mittal
#27. The best thing government can do now is get out of the way and let small businesses innovate, hire and grow. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen unless Washington stops increasing regulations, taxes and other blocks to business growth.
Oliver DeMille
#28. Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium.
Murray Rothbard
#29. Let each one of us say, 'I am an American. I intend to stay an American. I will do my best to wipe from my heart hate, rancor and political prejudice. I will sustain my government. And, through good days or bad, I will try to serve my country.'
Stephen Vincent Benet
#30. The thought about Republicans is, we're supposed to be Jeffersonian. That government governs the best that governs the least.
Pat Robertson
#31. I am just absolutely convinced that the best formula for giving us peace and preserving the American way of life is freedom, limited government, and minding our own business overseas.
Ron Paul
#32. The U.S. should take notes: Government overspending and a campaign of alienating investors and small business isn't really the best way to boost the economy or overcome massive unemployment.
Oliver DeMille
#33. I think Barack Obama and his team believe that the federal government is best prepared to handle virtually everything in our lives. I mean, they're socialists in every respect of the word and I think they'd like to take over everything in our lives if they could, including health care.
Mark Neumann
#34. I have been in Congress for more than a half century. I have lived through times of fear and times of hope. Of despair and of achievement. I have seen our government at its best, but today I fear that we see our government at its worst.
Robert Byrd
#35. We developed at the local school district level probably the best public school system in the world. Or it was until the Federal government added Federal interference to Federal financial aid and eroded educational quality in the process.
Ronald Reagan
#36. First, I thought Twitter was some kind of hybrid car being developed by Government Motors. Then I thought it was a new bite-size snack combining what's best of the Frito and the Cheeto. Then I found out it was me. On a laptop. At the U.S. Open. Having fun.
Dan Jenkins
#37. We need a government that is what we are at our best. Smart, efficient, pragmatic and compassionate.
Deval Patrick
#38. Each of us should take personal responsibility for our diet, and our children's diet, and the government's role should be to make certain it provides the best information possible to help people stay healthy.
Jim Talent
#39. If the government fails to listen to your demands, then you will decide what is best for you.
Muqtada Al Sadr
#40. Mr. Obama is proud of his belief that government knows best. When he told the world that individuals were not totally responsible for their personal success, that government has a major role in it, many Americans were taken aback. But Barack Obama sincerely believes that.
Bill O'Reilly
#41. Good Government is not intrusive the people are hardly aware of it; the next best is felt yet loved; then comes that which is known and feared; the worst government is hated.
Laozi
#42. Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American Dream. And our current government programs, offer at best only a partial solution. They help people deal with poverty, but they do not help them escape it.
Marco Rubio
#43. The best justification governments can find to shut down information is that lives are at risk. In fact, lives have been at risk as a result of the silences and lies revealed in these leaks.
Jemima Khan
#44. You know that big government doesn't hurt big corporations. They've got the best lawyers and accountants in the world. You know who gets destroyed by big government? It's the little guys.
Marco Rubio
#45. Steady, firm, and kind government of prisoners is the truest humanity and the best exercise of duty. It is with convicts as with children: unseasonable indulgence, indiscreetly granted, leads to mischiefs which we may deplore but cannot repair.
Dorothea Dix
#46. [T]ax cuts are not just something that all taxpayers deserve, but also the best way to curb government spending. It is the best kind of tax reform. If the money never reaches the table, Congress can't gobble it up.
Zell Miller
#47. Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Thomas Paine
#48. If the government announced that it was going to allocate a vast tranche of education funding purely to the pupils at the best public schools, there would be a national outcry - and yet this is precisely what the Olympics represents in terms of sports funding.
Will Self
#49. Our best protection against bigger government in Washington is better government in the states.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#50. I know that strong trade unions and best supported by Labour Government actually protect worker's rights.
Gisela Stuart
#51. Self-government by the whole people is the teleologic idea. The republican form of government is the noblest and the best, as it is the latest.
Henry Ward Beecher
#52. Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that ... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.
Thomas Jefferson
#53. The politics of the Essays preach a conservatism natural in one who aspired to rule. Bacon wants a strong central power. Monarchy is the best form of government; and usually the efficiency of a state varies with the concentration of power.
Will Durant
#54. The government's objective, broadly expressed, is that all persons, whatever their level of ability, whether they live in town or country, have a right as citizens to a free education of the kind for which they are best fitted and to the fullest extent of their powers.
Peter Fraser
#55. We believe in government involvement that leads to independence: good schools, quality roads and the best health care.
Rick Perry
#56. Democracy needs support, and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies.
Benazir Bhutto
#57. In some dim beginning, man created the institution of government as a convenience for himself. And, ever since that time, government has been doing its best to become an inconvenience.
Ronald Reagan
#58. We have to allow people in the states to make their own decisions, to get government agencies out of the way and let local people make decisions about what's best for them.
Pete Sessions
#59. I believe the states can best govern our home concerns and the federal government our foreign ones.
Thomas Jefferson
#60. Drugs is a government game, Bilal. A way to rob us of our best black men, our army. Everyone who plays the game loses. Then they get you right back where we started, in slavery! Then they get to say "This time you did it to yourself." I won't play that game.
Sister Souljah
#62. If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.
Aristotle.
#63. Keeping a monopoly on legitimate violence is still the proven best way to limit violence and allow reason some asylum where it can be freely practiced.
Jacques Ranciere
#65. Open-market democratic capitalism isn't the best system of government in the world, it just works the best.
John Ringo
#66. I am not alone in the conviction that real, lasting national security can best be obtained through complete transparency of government, business, and other facets of society, and this includes open access to all of the many available types of information.
Robert David Steele
#67. The people are the best guardians of their own rights and it is the duty of their executive to abstain from interfering in or thwarting the sacred exercise of the lawmaking functions of their government.
William Henry Harrison
#68. The weather records of the U.S.A. are the best kept and most accessible in the world, thanks to consistent government/military taxpayer support. There are longer European data sets, but the U.S.A. data is enough to forecast major extreme events.
Piers Corbyn
#69. A wise Government seeks to provide the opportunity through which the best of individual achievement can be obtained, while at the same time it seeks to remove such obstruction, such unfairness as springs from selfish human motives.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#70. The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to give all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life.
Frances Perkins
#71. Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.
John Taylor Gatto
#72. Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.
Baron De Montesquieu
#73. There may be room in government service for the altruist and the iconoclast, but I have yet to see one who was not treated as an oddity at best and at worst an object of suspicion and fear.
James Lee Burke
#74. Now it is evident that the form of government is best in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily.
Aristotle.
#75. I teach in the medical school, the School of Public Health, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Business School. And it's the best perch ... because most of my work crosses boundaries.
Michael Porter
#76. I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.
Stephen Colbert
#77. Organizations like the CIA and the FBI are still kind of supermen, kind of SS troops: We're blond and the best and everyone else should be incinerated. They don't know right from wrong. That's what makes a satire of these government bureaus really funny.
Mel Brooks
#78. The best way of realising our high ideals is to show that we have an alternative in government that is credible, that is radical, and is electable - is neither a pale imitation of what the Tories offer nor is it the route to being a party of permanent protest rather than a party of government.
Gordon Brown
#79. Providing all Latin-American children with the education and early childhood development that they need is in the best interest of all, so it has to be a priority for all of us, not only the government and civil society, but also the business sector.
Shakira
#80. The best way to understand this whole issue is to look at what the government does: it takes money from some people, keeps a bunch of it, and gives the rest to other people.
Dave Barry
#81. The best view of big government is in the rearview mirror as we leave it behind.
Ronald Reagan
#82. I believe we need to attract a new generation of the best and brightest to public service and I believe that government can be a source of inspiration, not degradation.
Andrew Cuomo
#83. The U.S. invaded Vietnam because many in our government - Lyndon Johnson's best and brightest - imagined it could impose a government on that country that would provide a buffer against China and stop the supposedly rolling dominos of Communism.
Jay Parini
#84. 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
#85. Past experience with fiscal austerity at home and overseas strongly suggests that it is best for the economy's long-run performance to restrain government spending rather than raise taxes.
Mark Zandi
#86. Only if government fulfilled its responsibility by fostering a robust economy was it ressonable to hold individuals responsible for working hard and striving to do their best.
Pursuing the American Dream, 8, 246
Calvin C. Jillson
#87. Similar to Churchill's view that "democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried," although it is by no means a bulletproof theory, the CAPM is the best theory to explain the risk/return relationship that the greatest financial minds have been able to devise.
Matthew Krantz
#88. It's clear that it is in the best interest of business to be part of the conservation, along with governments and civil society.
Richard Branson
#89. The legislation of the government has been directed rather to the protection of the rights of money and property than to the best good of the citizen.
Susette La Flesche
#90. As they work hard for our children, America's teachers often reach into their own pockets to make sure they have the best classroom supplies. I feel strongly that the federal government should help make up for their personal financial burden.
John Warner
#91. That depends on how Washington reacts. Every state joined the Union voluntarily; they should have the right to leave it again if the Federal government no longer represents their best interests.
Lynn Austin
#92. Libertarians are believers in small government who really mean it
no excuses, no exceptions. [For Libertarians], the excesses of government are their best recruiters.
Richard Brookhiser
#93. Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex.
Valerie Solanas
#94. The labour movement had the best opportunity in 50 years to transform not merely an industrial situation and win an important battle for workers in struggle, but an opportunity to change the government of the day.
Arthur Scargill
#95. The whole of government needs to contribute to the shared goal of restructuring the British economy. But that means taking on the myth that the Treasury either knows best or can run it all. It just doesn't.
David Miliband
#96. Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable - the art of the next best
Otto Von Bismarck
#97. Most problems are best solved privately, not through government. There's a problem of discourtesy in the world, which is best handled through social norms, which are indispensable. But you wouldn't want the government to be mandating courtesy.
Cass Sunstein
#98. Government does best when it helps people help themselves. Human dignity is found not in a handout but in being able to do for one's self.
Trent Lott
#100. For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.
Alexander Pope
