Motivational Quotes

Government

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

- Durant, William J.

Best Quotes about Government

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

Baluch, Joy

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

Bunting, Basil

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

Fred Thompson

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

Pittacus

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Solon

10.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

11.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

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

Reagan, Ronald

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Reagan, Ronald

16.

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

Marshalov, Boris

17.

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

Reston, James

18.

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

Friedman, Milton

19.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

20.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

21.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

22.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

23.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

24.

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

Russell, Bertrand

25.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Voltaire

26.

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

Proverb, French

27.

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

Jackson, Andrew

28.

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

Burns, George

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Reston, James

32.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Lippmann, Walter

33.

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

34.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

35.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

41.

For its part, Government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways -- to the voices of quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices, and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Nixon, Richard M.

42.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

43.

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

Rostand, Jean

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.

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

Updike, John

46.

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

Baxter, Beverley

47.

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

Hospers, John

48.

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