Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Boytzwnburg, Count

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

Hume, David

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

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

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

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

Kempton, Murray

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

Jefferson, Thomas

10.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

11.

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.

12.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

13.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

14.

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

15.

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

Russell, Bertrand

16.

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

17.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

18.

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

19.

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

Baxter, Beverley

20.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

21.

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

Lawson, Nigel

22.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

23.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

24.

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

Solon

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

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

H. L. Mencken

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

31.

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

Jackson, Andrew

32.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

33.

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

34.

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

Caldwell, John S.

35.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

36.

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

Burns, George

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Reagan, Ronald

44.

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

Hospers, John

45.

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

Bunting, Basil

46.

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

Reagan, Ronald

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

50.

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