Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Russell, Bertrand

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Reagan, Ronald

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

Dulles, John Foster

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

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

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

Caldwell, John S.

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

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

Bastiat, Frederic

10.

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

Lawson, Nigel

11.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

12.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

13.

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

Hume, David

14.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

15.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

16.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

17.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

18.

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

19.

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

Herbert, A. P.

20.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

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

22.

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

Proverb, French

23.

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

Douglas, William O.

24.

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

25.

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

Cousin, Victor

26.

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

Reston, James

27.

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

Melbourne, Lord

28.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

29.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Richard M. Nixon

30.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

31.

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

Welch, Robert

32.

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

33.

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

Solon

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

Fred Thompson

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

44.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

45.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Mencken, H. L.

46.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

47.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

48.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

49.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

50.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry