Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Lawson, Nigel

Best Quotes about Government

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

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

Voltaire

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

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

Douglas, William O.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Bob Wells

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

10.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

11.

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

H. L. Mencken

12.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

13.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

14.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

15.

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

16.

In our consumer confidence surveys, we ask people whether they think government economic policy is good, fair, or poor. Increasingly, the answer we get is just plain laughter.

Schmiedeskamp, Jay

17.

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

18.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Updike, John

22.

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

23.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

24.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

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

Lawson, Nigel

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

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

Baluch, Joy

28.

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

29.

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

Shaw, George Bernard

30.

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

31.

Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.

Baxter, Beverley

32.

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

33.

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

Russell, Bertrand

34.

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

35.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

36.

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

37.

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

38.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

39.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

40.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

41.

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

Welch, Robert

42.

In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?

Proverb, French

43.

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

Reston, James

44.

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

Cousin, Victor

45.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

46.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

47.

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

48.

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

Crockett, Davy

49.

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

50.

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

Kempton, Murray