Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Themistocles

Best Quotes about Government

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

Herbert, A. P.

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

Richard M. Nixon

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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

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

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

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

Bob Wells

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

Reston, James

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

10.

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

11.

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

Bunting, Basil

12.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

13.

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

14.

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

Fred Thompson

15.

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

Bertrand Russell

16.

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

Crockett, Davy

17.

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

Rostand, Jean

18.

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

19.

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

Russell, Bertrand

20.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

21.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

22.

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

Burns, George

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Einstein, Albert

26.

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

27.

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

Dulles, John Foster

28.

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Updike, John

29.

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

Updike, John

30.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

31.

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

32.

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

Themistocles

33.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

34.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

35.

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

Lawson, Nigel

36.

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

37.

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

Durant, William J.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Pittacus

41.

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

Baxter, Beverley

42.

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

43.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

44.

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

45.

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

46.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

47.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

48.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

49.

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

50.

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

Friedman, Milton