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

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

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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

Rostand, Jean

10.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

11.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

12.

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

13.

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

Gardner, John W.

14.

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

Bertrand Russell

15.

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.

16.

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

Truman, Harry S

17.

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

Updike, John

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Russell, Bertrand

21.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

22.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

23.

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

24.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

25.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

26.

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

Hospers, John

27.

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

28.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life -- this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

O'Rourke, P. J.

29.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

30.

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

Einstein, Albert

31.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

32.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

33.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

38.

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

Themistocles

39.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

40.

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

Reston, James

41.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

42.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

43.

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

44.

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

Burns, George

45.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

46.

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

Durant, William J.

47.

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

48.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

49.

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

Friedman, Milton

50.

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