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

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

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

Proverb, French

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

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

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Jefferson, Thomas

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Burns, George

10.

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

11.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

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

Herbert, A. P.

13.

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

Reagan, Ronald

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

17.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

18.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

19.

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

Updike, John

20.

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

Baxter, Beverley

21.

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

Themistocles

22.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

23.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

24.

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

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

27.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

28.

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

29.

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

Solon

30.

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

31.

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

Updike, John

32.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

33.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

34.

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

35.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

36.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

37.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

38.

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

Welch, Robert

39.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

40.

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

41.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

42.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

43.

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

Hospers, John

44.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

45.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

46.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

47.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

48.

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

49.

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

Hume, David

50.

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