Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Boytzwnburg, Count

Best Quotes about Government

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

Solon

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

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

Cousin, Victor

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

Murray, Bill

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

10.

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

11.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

12.

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.

13.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

14.

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

Bertrand Russell

15.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

16.

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

Caldwell, John S.

17.

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

Reston, James

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

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

Updike, John

20.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Reagan, Ronald

21.

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

Friedman, Milton

22.

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

H. L. Mencken

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

27.

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

Rostand, Jean

28.

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

Hume, David

29.

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

Douglas, William O.

30.

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

31.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

32.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

33.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

34.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Bob Wells

43.

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.

44.

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

Voltaire

45.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

46.

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

47.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

48.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

49.

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

50.

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