Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bunting, Basil

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

Pittacus

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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

Russell, Bertrand

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.

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

Herbert, A. P.

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

Kempton, Murray

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

Richard M. Nixon

10.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Jefferson, Thomas

11.

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

Proverb, French

12.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

13.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

14.

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

15.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

16.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

17.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

18.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

19.

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

Baluch, Joy

20.

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

Themistocles

21.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

22.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

23.

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

24.

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

Bunting, Basil

25.

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

26.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

27.

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

28.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

29.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

30.

You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

George W. Bush

31.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

32.

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

Melbourne, Lord

33.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

34.

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

H. L. Mencken

35.

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

Burns, George

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

39.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

46.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

47.

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

48.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

49.

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

Hospers, John

50.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon