Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

George W. Bush

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

Bastiat, Frederic

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

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

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

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

Proverb, French

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

10.

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

11.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

12.

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

13.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Hume, David

14.

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

Rostand, Jean

15.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

16.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

17.

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

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.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

20.

Mills, C. Wright

21.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Bertrand Russell

25.

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

Marshalov, Boris

26.

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

27.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Roosevelt, Theodore

28.

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

Friedman, Milton

29.

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

30.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

31.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

32.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

33.

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

34.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire

35.

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

Welch, Robert

36.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

37.

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

Themistocles

38.

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

Gardner, John W.

39.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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.

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

Pittacus

42.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

43.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

44.

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

45.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

46.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

47.

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

Herbert, A. P.

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Reagan, Ronald