Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Friedman, Milton

Best Quotes about Government

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

Melbourne, Lord

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

Welch, Robert

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

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

Bunting, Basil

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.

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

Friedman, Milton

10.

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

11.

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

12.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

13.

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

14.

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

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.

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

Baluch, Joy

17.

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

18.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

19.

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

20.

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

21.

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

Herbert, A. P.

22.

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

23.

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.

24.

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

Fred Thompson

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

28.

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

Rostand, Jean

29.

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

Richard M. Nixon

30.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

31.

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

32.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

33.

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

Themistocles

34.

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

35.

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

Updike, John

36.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

37.

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

Gardner, John W.

38.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

39.

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

Voltaire

40.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

41.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

42.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

43.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

44.

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

45.

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

Pittacus

46.

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

Einstein, Albert

47.

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

Durant, William J.

48.

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

49.

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

Reagan, Ronald

50.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.