Skip to content

You ask which form of government is the best? Whichever teaches us to govern ourselves.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige, die uns lehrt, uns selbst zu regieren.

Original text (German)

Another quote →

Notes from Wikiquote

Maxim 353, trans. Stopp

Variants

by Saunders: Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. (225)

Topics

Government

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.

Maxims and Reflections (1833)

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

Elective Affinities (1809)

I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn.

Of freedom and of life he only is deserving
Who every day must conquer them anew.

Faust, Part 2 (1832)

Properly speaking, such work is never finished; one must declare it so when, according to time and circumstances, one has done one's best.

All Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quotes →

You may also like

Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.