Motivational Quotes

Government

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

- Bonaparte, Napoleon

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Fred Thompson

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

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.

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

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

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

Douglas, William O.

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

10.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

11.

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

Bunting, Basil

12.

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

13.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

17.

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

18.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

19.

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

20.

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

George W. Bush

21.

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

Friedman, Milton

22.

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

Lawson, Nigel

23.

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

Melbourne, Lord

24.

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

Reston, James

25.

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

Burns, George

26.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

27.

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

28.

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.

29.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

30.

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

Updike, John

31.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

35.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

36.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

37.

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

H. L. Mencken

38.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

39.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Baxter, Beverley

43.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

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

Voltaire

45.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

46.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

47.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

48.

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

Truman, Harry S

49.

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

50.

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