Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Baluch, Joy

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

Reston, James

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

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

George W. Bush

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

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

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

Dulles, John Foster

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

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

11.

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

Baxter, Beverley

12.

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

13.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

14.

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

15.

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

Updike, John

16.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

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

Themistocles

18.

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

19.

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

20.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

21.

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.

22.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

23.

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

Burns, George

24.

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

25.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

26.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

Solon

27.

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

28.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

29.

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

Updike, John

30.

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.

31.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Friedman, Milton

35.

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

Kempton, Murray

36.

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

37.

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

Truman, Harry S

38.

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

39.

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

Durant, William J.

40.

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

Reston, James

41.

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

42.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

46.

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.

47.

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

Einstein, Albert

48.

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

Voltaire

49.

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

Herbert, A. P.

50.

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.