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

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

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

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

Hume, David

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

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

Melbourne, Lord

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

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

Bertrand Russell

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

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

Baluch, Joy

10.

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

H. L. Mencken

11.

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

Jackson, Andrew

12.

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

Friedman, Milton

13.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Burns, George

17.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

20.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

21.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Carlyle, Thomas

22.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

23.

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

24.

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

Fred Thompson

25.

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

26.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

27.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

28.

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.

29.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

30.

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

31.

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

32.

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.

33.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

34.

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

Herbert, A. P.

35.

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

Friedman, Milton

36.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

37.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

38.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

39.

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

Themistocles

40.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

41.

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

Bunting, Basil

42.

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

George W. Bush

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

46.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

47.

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

Cousin, Victor

48.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

49.

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

50.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.