Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bertrand Russell

Best Quotes about Government

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?

Proverb, French

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

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Themistocles

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

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

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.

Mencken, H. L.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

10.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Madison, James

11.

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

Richard M. Nixon

12.

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

Baxter, Beverley

13.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

14.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

15.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

16.

You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

George W. Bush

17.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

Solon

18.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

19.

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray

20.

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

Baluch, Joy

21.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

22.

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

Crockett, Davy

23.

In our consumer confidence surveys, we ask people whether they think government economic policy is good, fair, or poor. Increasingly, the answer we get is just plain laughter.

Schmiedeskamp, Jay

24.

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Sir Winston Churchill

25.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

26.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

27.

Government can be bigger than any of the players on the field as a referee, but it has no right to become one of the players.

Igleheart, Austin

28.

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

Gardner, John W.

29.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

30.

To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

Lawson, Nigel

31.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

32.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

33.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

35.

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

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.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

38.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

39.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

40.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

41.

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

Friedman, Milton

42.

Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

Burns, George

43.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

44.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

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

Voltaire

46.

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.

Baudrillard, Jean

47.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

48.

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

H. L. Mencken

49.

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

Jackson, Andrew

50.

A man without a vote is man without protection.