Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright

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

H. L. Mencken

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

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

10.

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

11.

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

Pittacus

12.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

13.

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

Voltaire

14.

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

Reston, James

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Kempton, Murray

21.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

22.

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

Bertrand Russell

23.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

24.

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

Hume, David

25.

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

26.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

27.

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

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.

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

Proverb, French

30.

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

Themistocles

31.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

32.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

33.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

34.

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

Lawson, Nigel

35.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

36.

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

37.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

41.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

42.

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

Melbourne, Lord

43.

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