Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Roosevelt, Theodore

Best Quotes about Government

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

Herbert, A. P.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Gardner, John W.

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

Pittacus

10.

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

11.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

12.

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

Dulles, John Foster

13.

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

14.

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

Reston, James

15.

The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.

Sade, Marquis De

16.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

17.

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

Crockett, Davy

18.

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

Durant, William J.

19.

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

Baxter, Beverley

20.

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

21.

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

Fred Thompson

22.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

23.

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

24.

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

Bunting, Basil

25.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

26.

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

George W. Bush

27.

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

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.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

30.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

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

Rostand, Jean

34.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

35.

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

36.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

41.

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

Friedman, Milton

42.

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

Melbourne, Lord

43.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

44.

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

45.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

46.

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

Marshalov, Boris

47.

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

48.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

49.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

50.

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