Motivational Quotes

Government

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

- Balzac, Honore De

Best Quotes about Government

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

Melbourne, Lord

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

Gardner, John W.

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

Truman, Harry S

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

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

Herbert, A. P.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

10.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

11.

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.

12.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

13.

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

Kempton, Murray

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

18.

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

Rostand, Jean

19.

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

20.

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

Updike, John

21.

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

Bunting, Basil

22.

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

23.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

24.

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

Reston, James

25.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Updike, John

26.

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

27.

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

Voltaire

28.

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

Murray, Bill

29.

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

Baluch, Joy

30.

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

Crockett, Davy

31.

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

32.

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

33.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

34.

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

Richard M. Nixon

35.

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

Bertrand Russell

36.

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

37.

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

Burns, George

38.

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

Pittacus

39.

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

Cousin, Victor

40.

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

Friedman, Milton

41.

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

Jackson, Andrew

42.

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

Proverb, French

43.

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

Hume, David

44.

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

Reston, James

45.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

50.

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

Hospers, John