Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bastiat, Frederic

Best Quotes about Government

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

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

Kocher, Gerhard

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

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

Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.

Baxter, Beverley

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

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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

10.

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

11.

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

Caldwell, John S.

12.

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

13.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

14.

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

15.

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

Hume, David

16.

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

Richard M. Nixon

17.

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

Murray, Bill

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

21.

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

George W. Bush

22.

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

23.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

24.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Einstein, Albert

28.

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

Truman, Harry S

29.

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

Updike, John

30.

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

Burns, George

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Bertrand Russell

34.

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

Themistocles

35.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

36.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

37.

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.

38.

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.

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

43.

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

Lawson, Nigel

44.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

45.

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