Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bonaparte, Napoleon

Best Quotes about Government

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign. That is the essence of the problem.

Mirabeau, Comte De

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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

Durant, William J.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.

Beecher, Henry Ward

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

Solon

That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.

Pittacus

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

10.

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

14.

Of the best rulers, The people only know that they exist; the next best they love and praise the next they fear; and the next they revile. When they do not command the people's faith, some will lose faith in them, and then they resort to oaths! But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done, the people all remark, We have done it ourselves.

Lao-Tzu

15.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Franklin, Benjamin

16.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Updike, John

17.

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

Bob Wells

18.

Any government is potentially the worst client in the world you could ever possibly want to have.

Thomas Heatherwick

19.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

20.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

21.

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

Bertrand Russell

22.

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

23.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

24.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire

25.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

26.

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

27.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

28.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

29.

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

30.

For its part, Government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways -- to the voices of quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices, and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Nixon, Richard M.

31.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

32.

The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations. But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

33.

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

Gladstone, William E.

34.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

35.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

36.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

37.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

38.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

39.

Generosity is a part of my character, and I therefore hasten to assure this Government that I will never make an allegation of dishonesty against it wherever a simple explanation of stupidity will suffice.

Lever, Leslie Baron

40.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

41.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

42.

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

Kempton, Murray

43.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

44.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

45.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

46.

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

Dulles, John Foster

47.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton