Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

Durant, William J.

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

Hume, David

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

Baluch, Joy

10.

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

11.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

12.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

13.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

14.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

15.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Jefferson, Thomas

16.

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

Bunting, Basil

17.

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

Dulles, John Foster

18.

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.

19.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

20.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

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

Reston, James

22.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

23.

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

Russell, Bertrand

24.

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

Caldwell, John S.

25.

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

Truman, Harry S

26.

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

Solon

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

30.

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

31.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

32.

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

33.

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

Kempton, Murray

34.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

35.

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

Voltaire

36.

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

Fred Thompson

37.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

38.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

39.

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

Reagan, Ronald

40.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Socrates

41.

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

Rostand, Jean

42.

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

Lawson, Nigel

43.

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

44.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

45.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

46.

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

47.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

48.

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

Updike, John

49.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

50.

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