Motivational Quotes

Government

Safety of the state is the highest law.

- Justinian

Best Quotes about Government

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life -- this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

O'Rourke, P. J.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

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

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

Bastiat, Frederic

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

Updike, John

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

10.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

11.

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

Durant, William J.

12.

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

Themistocles

13.

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

Kempton, Murray

14.

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

Reagan, Ronald

15.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Hospers, John

20.

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

21.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

22.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Cousin, Victor

25.

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, then everybody disagrees.

Marshalov, Boris

26.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

27.

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

Russell, Bertrand

28.

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

Updike, John

29.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

30.

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

31.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

32.

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

Lawson, Nigel

33.

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

Friedman, Milton

34.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

35.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

36.

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

Reston, James

37.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

38.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

39.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

40.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

41.

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

42.

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

Melbourne, Lord

43.

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

44.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

45.

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

46.

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

Baluch, Joy

47.

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

48.

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

Richard M. Nixon

49.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

50.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Jefferson, Thomas