Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Reston, James

Best Quotes about Government

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

Welch, Robert

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

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

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

Gardner, John W.

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

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

10.

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

11.

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

Durant, William J.

12.

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

Updike, John

13.

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

Pittacus

14.

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

Baxter, Beverley

15.

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

Bunting, Basil

16.

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

17.

The point to remember is what government gives it must first take away

Caldwell, John S.

18.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

19.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

20.

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

21.

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

George W. Bush

22.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

23.

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

24.

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

Rostand, Jean

25.

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

26.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Socrates

27.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

28.

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

29.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

33.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

34.

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Crossman, Richard

35.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Jefferson, Thomas

36.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

37.

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

Kempton, Murray

38.

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

Reagan, Ronald

39.

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

Douglas, William O.

40.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

41.

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

42.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

Solon

43.

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

Baluch, Joy

44.

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

Friedman, Milton

45.

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