Motivational Quotes

Government

Fear is the foundation of most government.

- Adams, John

Best Quotes about Government

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

Bunting, Basil

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

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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 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

10.

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

Voltaire

11.

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

Marshalov, Boris

12.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

13.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

14.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

15.

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

Reston, James

16.

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

17.

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

18.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

19.

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

20.

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

Russell, Bertrand

21.

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

22.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

23.

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

24.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

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

Friedman, Milton

26.

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

27.

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

Herbert, A. P.

28.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

George W. Bush

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

36.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

37.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

38.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

39.

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

H. L. Mencken

40.

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

41.

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

Jackson, Andrew

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

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

Hume, David

45.

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

Hospers, John

46.

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

Fred Thompson

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.

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

49.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

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