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

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

Einstein, Albert

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

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

Bunting, Basil

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

Friedman, Milton

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

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

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

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

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.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

11.

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

12.

The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

Welch, Robert

13.

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

Baxter, Beverley

14.

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

Kempton, Murray

15.

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

Baluch, Joy

16.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

17.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

18.

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

Friedman, Milton

19.

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

20.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

21.

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

Fred Thompson

22.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

23.

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

24.

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

Douglas, William O.

25.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

26.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Melbourne, Lord

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

35.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

36.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

37.

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

Reston, James

38.

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

Bob Wells

39.

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

Gardner, John W.

40.

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

Lawson, Nigel

41.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

45.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

46.

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

47.

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

48.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

49.

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

50.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald