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

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

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

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

Dulles, John Foster

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

Murray, Bill

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

Gardner, John W.

10.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

11.

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

12.

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

Marshalov, Boris

13.

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

Reagan, Ronald

14.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

15.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

16.

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

17.

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

Baluch, Joy

18.

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

Themistocles

19.

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

Reston, James

20.

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

Einstein, Albert

21.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

22.

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

23.

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

Kempton, Murray

24.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

25.

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

Lawson, Nigel

26.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

27.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

28.

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

Reston, James

29.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

30.

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

Fred Thompson

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Hospers, John

34.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

35.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

36.

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

37.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

38.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

39.

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

Russell, Bertrand

40.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

41.

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

Updike, John

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

45.

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

Pittacus

46.

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

Crockett, Davy

47.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

48.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

49.

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

50.

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