Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Einstein, Albert

Best Quotes about Government

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

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

Marshalov, Boris

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

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

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.

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

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

Baluch, Joy

10.

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

Bertrand Russell

11.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

12.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

13.

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

Hume, David

14.

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

Fred Thompson

15.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

16.

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.

17.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

18.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Durant, William J.

23.

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

Pittacus

24.

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

Burns, George

25.

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

Dulles, John Foster

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Lawson, Nigel

33.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

34.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

35.

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

36.

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

Shaw, George Bernard

37.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

38.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

39.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

40.

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

Reagan, Ronald

41.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

42.

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

Richard M. Nixon

43.

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

44.

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

Updike, John

45.

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

46.

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

Crockett, Davy

47.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

48.

What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government.

President Barack Obama

49.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.