Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bertrand Russell

Best Quotes about Government

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

George W. Bush

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

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

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

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

Voltaire

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

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

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

Russell, Bertrand

10.

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

11.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

12.

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

Reston, James

13.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

14.

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

15.

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

Updike, John

16.

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

17.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

18.

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

19.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

20.

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

21.

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

22.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

23.

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.

24.

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

Gardner, John W.

25.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

26.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

27.

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

Cousin, Victor

28.

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

Einstein, Albert

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

H. L. Mencken

32.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

33.

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

Friedman, Milton

34.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

35.

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

36.

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

Updike, John

37.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

38.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

39.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

40.

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

41.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

42.

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

43.

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

Reston, James

44.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

45.

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

Friedman, Milton

46.

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

Bertrand Russell

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon