Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Burns, George

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Dulles, John Foster

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

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

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

Reston, James

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

10.

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

11.

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

Lawson, Nigel

12.

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

Updike, John

13.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

14.

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

George W. Bush

15.

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

Hume, David

16.

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

17.

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

H. L. Mencken

18.

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

19.

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

Richard M. Nixon

20.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

21.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Proverb, French

25.

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

Bertrand Russell

26.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

27.

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

28.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Jefferson, Thomas

29.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

30.

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

31.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

32.

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

Reagan, Ronald

33.

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

Murray, Bill

34.

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

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.

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

Hospers, John

37.

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

Themistocles

38.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

39.

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

Voltaire

40.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

41.

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.

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Herbert, A. P.

45.

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

Fred Thompson

46.

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

Cousin, Victor

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Douglas, William O.

50.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon