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

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Reston, James

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Reston, James

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Solon

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

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

10.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

11.

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

12.

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

Marshalov, Boris

13.

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

Burns, George

14.

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

15.

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

Pittacus

16.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

17.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

18.

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

Fred Thompson

19.

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

Jackson, Andrew

20.

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

Reagan, Ronald

21.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

22.

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

23.

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

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.

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

Baxter, Beverley

26.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

27.

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

Proverb, French

28.

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

H. L. Mencken

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.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

35.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

36.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

37.

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

38.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Melbourne, Lord

39.

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

Bertrand Russell

40.

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

Friedman, Milton

41.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

42.

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

43.

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

Lawson, Nigel

44.

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

45.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

46.

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

47.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

48.

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

Einstein, Albert

49.

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.

50.

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