Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Hume, David

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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

Cousin, Victor

10.

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

11.

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

Kempton, Murray

12.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

13.

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

Hospers, John

14.

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

Russell, Bertrand

15.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

21.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

22.

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

Baxter, Beverley

23.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

24.

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

Bunting, Basil

25.

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

26.

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

Baluch, Joy

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

30.

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

31.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

32.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

33.

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

34.

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

Caldwell, John S.

35.

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

Proverb, French

36.

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

37.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

38.

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, then everybody disagrees.

Marshalov, Boris

39.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

40.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

41.

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

42.

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

H. L. Mencken

43.

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

44.

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

Murray, Bill

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Pittacus

48.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

49.

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