Motivational Quotes

Government

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

- Alcott, Amos Bronson

Best Quotes about Government

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

Themistocles

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

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

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

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

Friedman, Milton

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

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

Truman, Harry S

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

10.

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

Caldwell, John S.

11.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

12.

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

13.

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

Voltaire

14.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

15.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Melbourne, Lord

16.

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

Hume, David

17.

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

Tuchman, Barbara

18.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

19.

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

Bunting, Basil

20.

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

21.

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

Murray, Bill

22.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Friedman, Milton

23.

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

24.

Government can be bigger than any of the players on the field as a referee, but it has no right to become one of the players.

Igleheart, Austin

25.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

26.

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.

27.

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

Reston, James

28.

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

Welch, Robert

29.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

30.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

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.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

33.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

34.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

35.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

36.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

37.

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray

38.

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

Gardner, John W.

39.

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

Gladstone, William E.

40.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

41.

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

42.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

43.

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

44.

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

Lawson, Nigel

45.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

46.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

47.

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

Marshalov, Boris

48.

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

49.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

50.

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.