Motivational Quotes

Government

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

- Chapman, John Jay

Best Quotes about Government

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

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

Dulles, John Foster

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

George W. Bush

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

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

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

Rostand, Jean

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

Burns, George

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

10.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

11.

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

12.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

13.

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

Gardner, John W.

14.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

15.

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

16.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

17.

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

Updike, John

18.

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

19.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

20.

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

21.

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

Caldwell, John S.

22.

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

Kempton, Murray

23.

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

24.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Friedman, Milton

25.

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

Updike, John

26.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

27.

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

Douglas, William O.

28.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

29.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

30.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

31.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

Locke, John

32.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

33.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

Solon

34.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

35.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

36.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

37.

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

Hospers, John

38.

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

Baluch, Joy

39.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

40.

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

Einstein, Albert

41.

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

Murray, Bill

42.

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

Reston, James

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Reston, James

49.

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

50.

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