Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Reston, James

Best Quotes about Government

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

Solon

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

Caldwell, John S.

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

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

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

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

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

Amsterdam, Maury

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

10.

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

Richard M. Nixon

11.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

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

Bunting, Basil

13.

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

14.

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

Cousin, Victor

15.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

16.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Jefferson, Thomas

17.

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

18.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

19.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

20.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

21.

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

22.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

23.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

24.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

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

26.

The ship of state is the only known 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.

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

29.

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

Reagan, Ronald

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Burns, George

33.

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

34.

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

Russell, Bertrand

35.

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

Hume, David

36.

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

Lawson, Nigel

37.

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

38.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

39.

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Roosevelt, Theodore

40.

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

Pittacus

41.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

42.

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

Welch, Robert

43.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

44.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

45.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.

Baluch, Joy

49.

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

50.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.