Motivational Quotes

Government

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

- Chapman, John Jay

Best Quotes about Government

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Amsterdam, Maury

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

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

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

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Themistocles

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

10.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

11.

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

Richard M. Nixon

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

15.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

16.

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

Cousin, Victor

17.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

18.

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

Proverb, French

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

22.

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

Rostand, Jean

23.

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

24.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

25.

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

Updike, John

26.

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

Bertrand Russell

27.

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

Updike, John

28.

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

Baluch, Joy

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

Solon

31.

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

32.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

33.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

34.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

35.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

36.

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

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.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

39.

The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

Welch, Robert

40.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

41.

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

Burns, George

42.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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.

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

45.

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

46.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

47.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

48.

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

49.

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

Hume, David

50.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire