Motivational Quotes

Government

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

- Bonaparte, Napoleon

Best Quotes about Government

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

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

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

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Welch, Robert

10.

The point to remember is what government gives it must first take away

Caldwell, John S.

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Proverb, French

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.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Fred Thompson

19.

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

Voltaire

20.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Updike, John

24.

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

Durant, William J.

25.

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

26.

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

George W. Bush

27.

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

28.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

29.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

30.

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

Bob Wells

31.

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

Crockett, Davy

32.

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

Pittacus

33.

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

34.

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Roosevelt, Theodore

35.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

36.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

37.

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

Lawson, Nigel

38.

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

39.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

40.

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.

41.

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

Cousin, Victor

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Herbert, A. P.

45.

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

Themistocles

46.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

47.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.