Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Dulles, John Foster

Best Quotes about Government

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Updike, John

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

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

Gladstone, William E.

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

Russell, Bertrand

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Pittacus

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

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Roosevelt, Theodore

10.

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

Cousin, Victor

11.

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

12.

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

Einstein, Albert

13.

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

14.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

15.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

16.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

17.

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

18.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Jefferson, Thomas

19.

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

Reagan, Ronald

20.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

21.

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

22.

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

H. L. Mencken

23.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

24.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Reagan, Ronald

25.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

26.

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

Fred Thompson

27.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

28.

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

29.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Melbourne, Lord

30.

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright

31.

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

Themistocles

32.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

33.

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

Updike, John

34.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

36.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

37.

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

Reston, James

38.

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

Bertrand Russell

39.

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

George W. Bush

40.

If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to -- and you will -- leave, and be something else.

Noonan, Peggy

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Bunting, Basil

44.

What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government.

President Barack Obama

45.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

46.

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

Durant, William J.

47.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

48.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Socrates

49.

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

Lawson, Nigel

50.

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