Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Truman, Harry S

Best Quotes about Government

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

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

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

10.

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

Reston, James

11.

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

12.

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

Lawson, Nigel

13.

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Sir Winston Churchill

14.

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

Baluch, Joy

15.

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.

16.

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

17.

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

Durant, William J.

18.

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

19.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

20.

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

Truman, Harry S

21.

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

Pittacus

22.

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

Gladstone, William E.

23.

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.

24.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

25.

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

26.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

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

Hume, David

28.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

29.

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

Themistocles

30.

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

Herbert, A. P.

31.

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

32.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

33.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

34.

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

35.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

36.

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

Solon

37.

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

Caldwell, John S.

38.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

39.

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

Marshalov, Boris

40.

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

Bunting, Basil

41.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

42.

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

Crockett, Davy

43.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

44.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

45.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

46.

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

Updike, John

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.

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

49.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

50.

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