Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bonaparte, Napoleon

Best Quotes about Government

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

Fred Thompson

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

Einstein, Albert

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

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

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.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Voltaire

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

Shaw, George Bernard

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

10.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Jefferson, Thomas

11.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

12.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

13.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

14.

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

15.

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

Douglas, William O.

16.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

17.

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

18.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

19.

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

20.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

21.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

22.

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

23.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

24.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

25.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

26.

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

Russell, Bertrand

27.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

28.

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

29.

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

Bertrand Russell

30.

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

31.

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

Gardner, John W.

32.

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

Cousin, Victor

33.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

34.

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.

35.

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

36.

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

37.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Hume, David

38.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

39.

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

Pittacus

40.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

41.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

42.

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

Bunting, Basil

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

46.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

47.

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

48.

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