Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Updike, John

Best Quotes about Government

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

George W. Bush

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

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

Truman, Harry S

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

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

Wallis, W. Allen

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

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

10.

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

Updike, John

11.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

Durant, William J.

15.

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

16.

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

17.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

18.

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

Themistocles

19.

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.

20.

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

Lawson, Nigel

21.

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

Jackson, Andrew

22.

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

23.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

24.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

25.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

26.

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

27.

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

Baxter, Beverley

28.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

29.

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

Bertrand Russell

30.

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

31.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

32.

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

33.

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

Marshalov, Boris

34.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

35.

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

Hume, David

36.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

37.

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

Herbert, A. P.

38.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

39.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

40.

What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government.

President Barack Obama

41.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

45.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

46.

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

47.

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

Bunting, Basil

48.

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

49.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

50.

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