Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bunting, Basil

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

Russell, Bertrand

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

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

Richard M. Nixon

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

10.

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

Jackson, Andrew

11.

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

12.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

13.

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

Baluch, Joy

14.

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

Gardner, John W.

15.

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

16.

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

Welch, Robert

17.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Reagan, Ronald

22.

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

23.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

24.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

25.

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

Dulles, John Foster

26.

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

Baxter, Beverley

27.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

28.

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

29.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

30.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

31.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

32.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

33.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

34.

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

Reston, James

35.

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

36.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

37.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

38.

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

Themistocles

39.

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

40.

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

Murray, Bill

41.

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

Melbourne, Lord

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

45.

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

46.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

47.

In our consumer confidence surveys, we ask people whether they think government economic policy is good, fair, or poor. Increasingly, the answer we get is just plain laughter.

Schmiedeskamp, Jay

48.

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

Updike, John

49.

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

Pittacus

50.

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

Douglas, William O.