Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Best Quotes about Government

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

Cousin, Victor

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

Caldwell, John S.

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.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

Shaw, George Bernard

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

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.

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

Burns, George

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

Fred Thompson

13.

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

Bob Wells

14.

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

15.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

16.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

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

18.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

19.

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

20.

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

Marshalov, Boris

21.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

22.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

23.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

24.

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

Reston, James

25.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

26.

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

Einstein, Albert

27.

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

28.

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

Welch, Robert

29.

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

30.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

31.

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

32.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

33.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

34.

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

Reagan, Ronald

35.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

36.

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

37.

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

Updike, John

38.

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

39.

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

Hospers, John

40.

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

41.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

42.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

43.

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

44.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

45.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

46.

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

George W. Bush

47.

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