Motivational Quotes

Government

Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.

- Baxter, Beverley

Best Quotes about Government

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Themistocles

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

Bertrand Russell

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

10.

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

Tuchman, Barbara

11.

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

Welch, Robert

12.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

13.

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.

Sade, Marquis De

14.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

15.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Carlyle, Thomas

16.

But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.

Bunting, Basil

17.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

20.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

21.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

22.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

23.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Lippmann, Walter

24.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

25.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

26.

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.

Washington, George

27.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

Locke, John

28.

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.

Shaw, George Bernard

29.

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

Reston, James

30.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

31.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

32.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

33.

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

John Kenneth Galbraith

34.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

35.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

36.

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.

Shaw, George Bernard

37.

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Crossman, Richard

38.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

39.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

40.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

41.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

42.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

43.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

44.

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

Fred Thompson

45.

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

46.

Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.

Baluch, Joy

47.

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain.