Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

Best Quotes about Government

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.

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

Themistocles

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

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

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.

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

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

Gardner, John W.

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

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

10.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

11.

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.

12.

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

Richard M. Nixon

13.

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

14.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

15.

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

16.

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

Truman, Harry S

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Crockett, Davy

20.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

21.

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

22.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

23.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

24.

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

George W. Bush

25.

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

26.

The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

27.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

28.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

29.

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

Burns, George

30.

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

Murray, Bill

31.

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

32.

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

Gladstone, William E.

33.

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

34.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

35.

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

36.

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

Friedman, Milton

37.

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

Reston, James

38.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

39.

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

Voltaire

40.

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

Jackson, Andrew

41.

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

Updike, John

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Cousin, Victor

46.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

50.

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

Einstein, Albert