Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Crockett, Davy

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

10.

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

Russell, Bertrand

11.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

12.

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

Reston, James

13.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

14.

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

15.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

16.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

17.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

18.

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

Kempton, Murray

19.

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

Richard M. Nixon

20.

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

Burns, George

21.

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

22.

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

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.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

25.

Generosity is a part of my character, and I therefore hasten to assure this Government that I will never make an allegation of dishonesty against it wherever a simple explanation of stupidity will suffice.

Lever, Leslie Baron

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

28.

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

Hospers, John

29.

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

30.

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

31.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

32.

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

H. L. Mencken

33.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

36.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

37.

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

38.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

39.

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

40.

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

Reagan, Ronald

41.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

42.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

43.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

44.

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

Reston, James

45.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

46.

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

47.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

48.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

49.

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

Bunting, Basil

50.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.