Top 100 Good Government Quotes
#1. People know something has gone terribly wrong with our government and it has gotten so far off track. But people also know that there is nothing wrong in America that a good old-fashioned election can't fix.
Sarah Palin
#2. For decades now, the Democrats have had a good gig buying the votes of government workers with outrageous salaries, benefits and work rules - and then sticking productive earners with the bill. But, now, we're out of money.
Ann Coulter
#3. A good model of how to 'work with the enemy' internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet.
Alice Walker
#4. All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy.
Leo Tolstoy
#5. In times of political confusion, and under an arbitrary government, many will prefer to keep their capital inactive, concealed, and unproductive, either of profit or gratification, rather than run the risk of its display. This latter evil is never felt under a good government.
Jean-Baptiste Say
#6. We know that this nation entered into solemn treaties [with Indian tribes] which have been continuously violated for more than 250 years. It's a disgrace. It's an outrage. We must do everything in our power to keep those treaties. Otherwise, the word of the United States government is no good.
John McCain
#7. When the good lord calls you home, the government ought not come get your home.
Rick Perry
#8. I wanted to be what my high-school civics and history teacher thought of as a good American. That automatically involved taking an interest in government.
Olivia De Havilland
#9. We just want government to be a smart, supportive, reliable partner to the forces that are working for good in this country.
Van Jones
#10. Whenever we attempt to mend the scheme of Providence and to interfere in the Government of the world, we had need be very circumspect lest we do more harm than good.
Benjamin Franklin
#11. People forget ... that we structured it so that the government, or the people, would be repaid with a really good rate of return. And as it turns out, that aspect of TARP, that's what happened.
George W. Bush
#12. Nobody should be allowed to tinker with democracy. We will not discontinue the good works of the past government.
Manmohan Singh
#13. Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict.
Jasper Fforde
#14. The state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.
Aristotle.
#15. Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
Denis Diderot
#16. It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution that good government is effected.
Thomas Jefferson
#17. You elected government officials to make decisions and it's about time they started making good ones.
Bob Riley
#18. A good history covers not only what was done, but the thought that went into the action. You can read the history of a country through its actions.
Benjamin Hooks
#19. In truth, government has been good to Wall Street and big business.
Robert Reich
#20. I would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved.
Warren G
#21. Hamid Gul is an actor who is definitely not in our good books. Hamid Gul is somebody who was never appreciated by our government.
Asif Ali Zardari
#22. I don't believe any person looking for work is fearful of political judgment. Government is a large institution, and if they believe that people are going to get rid of good employees for political reasons, that's absurd.
Jan Brewer
#23. When government takes away options, it is bound to make some people worse off, even with intrinsicallly good intentions behind that government intervention.
Thomas Sowell
#24. Good government is no substitute for self-government.
Mahatma Gandhi
#25. Governments are necessarily continuing concerns. They have to keep going in good times and in bad. They therefore need a wide margin of safety. If taxes and debt are made all the people can bear when times are good, there will be certain disaster when times are bad.
Calvin Coolidge
#26. What is good about the United States is the sense that you can disagree with the government and not be seen as unpatriotic, although many in the government will try to make you seem unpatriotic.
George J. Mitchell
#27. If God is in fact separated from the government, then we can never possibly have a godly government. There's no way for America to be good if she's not godly.
Joyce Meyer
#28. You got any experience? (Carlos)
I'm former army intelligence, Special Forces, on contract to the U.S. government now for national security. That good enough for you, amigo? (Stoner)
It'll do. (Carlos)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#29. I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote, 'Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.'
Timothy McVeigh
#30. The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good.
Jonah Goldberg
#31. As governor, I work in hand in hand with tribal leaders on everything from disaster response to economic development. Tribal governments are important partners to our state government, and I value the good relationships my administration has cultivated with them.
Mary Fallin
#32. Popular government has not yet been proved to guarantee, always and everywhere, good government.
Walter Lippmann
#33. That future depends on the values of self-government, our sense of duty, loyalty, self-confidence and regard for the common good. We are a diverse country, and getting more diverse. And these virtues are what keep this great country together.
Jeff Miller
#34. Every time there's elections, we hand out cash. Usually to both sides, but this time the government is going to win for sure. The opposition is in a total mess. So we just have to pay off the government, which is good for us.
Aravind Adiga
#35. That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil.
Lyn Nofziger
#37. Yeah, man. It's time to let de people get good herbs and smoke. Government's a joke. All dey wan' is ya smoke cigarettes and cigar. Some cigar wickeder den herb. Yeah, man, ya can't smoke cigar. Smoke herb. Some big cigar me see man wit', God bless! Me tell him must smoke herb.
Bob Marley
#38. The Chinese government knows that what I am teaching is good and that I am teaching people to have high moral values.
Li Hongzhi
#39. Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.
Elias Boudinot
#40. The presidency is the most visible thread that runs through the tapestry of the American government. More often than not, for good or for ill, it sets the tone for the other branches and spurs the expectations of the people.
Mike Pence
#41. Providing for the common good, making people feel secure in their communities and homes - this is the central job of government. it's why all of us are here serving our state and our people.
John Baldacci
#42. We should not expect the state to appear in the guise of an extravagant good fairy at every christening, a loquacious companion at every stage of life's journey, and the unknown mourner at every funeral.
Margaret Thatcher
#43. Perhaps the one comforting thought I got out of this whole disgusting affair was that over the years when the government was tapping my telephone, it must certainly have heard some home truths from me about themselves, often couched in good Anglo-Saxon terms.
Helen Suzman
#45. In the discharge of this trust I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed toward the organization and administration of the Government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable.
George Washington
#46. Once you were in the hands of a Grand Vizier, you were dead. Grand Viziers were always scheming megalomaniacs. It was probably in the job description: "Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted minister.
Terry Pratchett
#47. There is no such thing as a good government. There never was. There can't be.
Emma Goldman
#48. Advertising is a tax paid for being unremarkable.*" If that is true, then this tax is rising fast, which is good news for the government - not to mention production companies, media sellers, and agencies -
Joseph Jaffe
#49. Some people think African states cannot be trusted with the cookie jar. But there are absolutely good NGOs who have this feeling of human solidarity and who also recognize that their work can only be supplementary to the government.
Meles Zenawi
#50. The challenge has always been that "good people" don't know how to win elections
Fela Durotoye
#51. You sometimes find something good in the lunatic fringe. In fact, we have got as part of our social and economic government today a whole lot of things which in my boyhood were considered lunatic fringe, and yet they are now part of everyday life.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#52. Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.
Kurt Vonnegut
#53. We do know now, all of us, that the most appalling cruelties are committed by apparently virtuous governments in expectation of a great good to come, never learning that the evil done now is the sure destroyer of the expected good.
Katherine Anne Porter
#54. No government should be without critics. If its intentions are good then it has nothing to fear from criticism.
Thomas Jefferson
#55. An advanced human rights friendly Constitution is fine and well - but what good is it if it is not put into practice? The government says it cherishes the principles in the SA Constitution, and yet acts in a manner which cannot be reconciled with that very Constitution.
Christina Engela
#56. Corruption is a virus with an antidote.
Injustice is an illness with a remedy.
Wisdom is the key to good governance;
righteousness is the key to sustaining it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#57. Liberals have shifted government into a position of being neutral between right and wrong. By concentrating power in government institutions, liberals chisel at the three pillars of society: the family unit, work ethic and faith. That's not good for America.
James G. Watt
#58. Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are NOT good?
Henry David Thoreau
#59. Advocacy groups, politicians, and bureaucrats use the government to advance their private good instead of the common good.
Joel Miller
#61. 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
#62. There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do.
Milton Friedman
#63. When these political action committees give money, they expect something in return other than good government.
Bob Dole
#64. As individuals, as families, as neighbors, as members of one community, people of all races and political views are usually decent, kind, compassionate. But in large corporations or governments, when great power accumulates in their hands, some become monsters even with good intentions.
Dean Koontz
#65. Without publicity, no good is permanent; under the auspices of publicity, no evil can continue.
Jeremy Bentham
#66. A government of five hundred country attornies and obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight and forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a dozen of persons of quality, who have betrayed their trust in order to obtain that power.
Edmund Burke
#67. Honor to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked government! So desires good sleep. How can I help it, if power likes to walk on crooked legs?
Friedrich Nietzsche
#68. Class warfare or soaking the so-called rich may make for good populist demagoguery and serve the political ends of the governing masterminds, but it does nothing to solve the grave realities of the federal government's insatiable appetite for spending and its inability to reform itself.
Mark R. Levin
#69. He was very good, it turned out, at outlining the flaws in the government as long as someone else was in charge of the government.
David Halberstam
#70. You owe me!" -Stephanie
"Why do I owe you?" -Joe
"I caught your no good cousin." -Stephanie
"Yeah and in the process you burned down a funeral home, and damaged thousands of dollars of government property." -Joe
"Well if you are going to be picky about it ... " -Stephanie
Janet Evanovich
#71. The happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend on piety, religion, and morality.
Fisher Ames
#72. Fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.
Louis D. Brandeis
#73. [I]n the end this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.
Elizabeth I
#74. 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
#75. Government does the least good and the most harm through subsidies.
James Cook
#76. I think any good government will target on the finishing date, that is, the polling day and make sure that their strategy is strong and in place to get them successfully re-elected.
Alexander Downer
#77. I have no doubt that the nation has suffered more from undue secrecy than from undue disclosure. The government takes good care of itself.
Daniel Schorr
#78. The only good government ... Is a bad one in a hell of a fright.
Joyce Cary
#79. It's good to know that the people of different countries are really concerned and involved in the movement to help Burma. I think in some ways it's better to have the people of the world on your side than the governments of the world, even if governments can be more effective in certain directions.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#80. I don't believe that government is good at picking technology, particularly technology that is changing. By the time you get it done and go through democracy, it's so outdated.
Michael Bloomberg
#81. It is our happiness to live under the government of a PRINCE who is satisfied with ruling according to law; as every other good prince will - We enjoy under his administration all the liberty that is proper and expedient for us.
Jonathan Mayhew
#82. Governments will rise, and governments will fall, and man will do evil to man, and all we can do is turn our hearts to good.
Margaret Peterson Haddix
#83. (Japanese Government believes that if you have a big laboratory with all the latest equipment and good funding it will automatically lead to creativity. It doesn't work that way.
Akio Morita
#84. Everything we know about human nature and about government tells us that individuals using their own money will achieve far more good for themselves and far more for others than politicians spending money they didn't have to work to earn.
Harry Browne
#85. A leader - whether in the home, church, business, community, or government - has authority due to her role, but her positional power will not bring about good for individuals or organizations unless it is backed up by the capital of character.
Dan B. Allender
#86. Surely the President can agree with us, that theft from government is not good. I know it's bold. It's out on the edge. I know from a Chicago-Springfield background it's hard to fully grasp that honesty could be part of government.
Newt Gingrich
#87. Good governance with good intentions is the hallmark of our government. Implementation with integrity is our core passion.
Narendra Modi
#88. This is a generation weaned on Watergate, and there is no presumption of innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead, there is a presumption that, without relentless scrutiny, the government will misbehave.
Dee Dee Myers
#89. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two [good and evil].
Abraham Lincoln
#90. There is nothing wrong with corporations. Corporations are a good thing. But corporations should not be running our government. Corporations are good because they drive our economy, they encourage people to assemble wealth and to risk it and then create jobs.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#91. The only way to effectively secure the common good is for the government to remain small.
Joel Miller
#92. In a literal sense, even a private company, of course, cannot do everything that it wants without some discussion with government. As a good corporate citizen, Severstal discussed the idea of a merger with Arcelor with the Russian government.
Alexei Mordashov
#93. There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
Benjamin Franklin
#94. A general principle of good taxation is that similar jobs, and similar kinds of compensation, should be taxed the same way: otherwise, the government is effectively subsidizing some jobs over others.
James Surowiecki
#95. The task of government was not to stop selfish striving - a hopeless task - but to harness it for the public good.
Ron Chernow
#96. It is not safe in the republican form of government that clannishness should exist either by compulsory or voluntary reason. It is not good for the government and it is not good for the individual.
Timothy Thomas Fortune
#97. A righteous government is of all the most to be wished for,Bearing of blessing and good fortune in the highest.Guided by the law of Truth, supported by dedication and zeal,It blossoms into the Best of Order, a Kingdom of Heaven!To effect this I shall work now and ever more.
Zoroaster
#98. For most Americans, Friday afternoons are filled with positive anticipation of the weekend. In Washington, it's where government officials dump stories they want to bury. Good news gets dropped on Monday so bureaucrats can talk about it all week.
John Sununu
#99. My view is that good community management is like having good municipal government: You should be able to have dissenting opinions and so on, freedom of speech, but your grandmother should also be able to walk down the street at night without having to worry about getting mugged.
Jimmy Wales
#100. It is the aim of good government to stimulate production, of bad government to encourage consumption.
Jean-Baptiste Say
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