Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Macaulay, Thomas B.

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Rostand, Jean

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

Pittacus

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.

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

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

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Voltaire

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

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.

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

Gardner, John W.

12.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

16.

In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?

Proverb, French

17.

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

Friedman, Milton

18.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

19.

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

20.

The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations. But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

24.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire

25.

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

Hospers, John

26.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

27.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

32.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

33.

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

34.

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

Reston, James

35.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

36.

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

Truman, Harry S

37.

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

Reagan, Ronald

38.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

39.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

40.

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

41.

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

George W. Bush

42.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

H. L. Mencken

47.

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

48.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

49.

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

50.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De