Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Boytzwnburg, Count

Best Quotes about Government

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.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Richard M. Nixon

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

Hospers, John

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

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government.

President Barack Obama

10.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Caldwell, John S.

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.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Baxter, Beverley

18.

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray

19.

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

Melbourne, Lord

20.

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

Douglas, William O.

21.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

22.

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

23.

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

Bertrand Russell

24.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

25.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

26.

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

27.

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

Bunting, Basil

28.

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

29.

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

30.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

31.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

32.

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

33.

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

H. L. Mencken

34.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

35.

Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.

Baluch, Joy

36.

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

Solon

37.

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

Pittacus

38.

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.

39.

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

Reagan, Ronald

40.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

41.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

42.

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

43.

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

Burns, George

44.

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

Russell, Bertrand

45.

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

Updike, John

46.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

47.

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

48.

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

Proverb, French

49.

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

50.

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.