Motivational Quotes

Government

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

- Topes, Lord Justice

Best Quotes about Government

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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

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

Baxter, Beverley

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

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

Bob Wells

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

10.

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

11.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

12.

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

Einstein, Albert

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.

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

Bunting, Basil

15.

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

16.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

17.

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

Gardner, John W.

18.

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

Reagan, Ronald

19.

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

Rostand, Jean

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.

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

22.

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

Reston, James

23.

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

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

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

Pittacus

28.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

31.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

32.

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

Dulles, John Foster

33.

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

34.

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

George W. Bush

35.

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.

36.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

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

38.

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

39.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

40.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

41.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Franklin, Benjamin

42.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

43.

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

44.

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

Herbert, A. P.

45.

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

46.

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

Updike, John

47.

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