Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Crockett, Davy

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

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

Voltaire

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

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

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

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

11.

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

Hume, David

12.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

13.

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

Rostand, Jean

14.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

15.

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

Marshalov, Boris

16.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

17.

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

Baluch, Joy

18.

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

19.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

20.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

21.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

22.

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

Bob Wells

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

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.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

28.

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

Jackson, Andrew

29.

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

30.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

31.

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

Friedman, Milton

32.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

33.

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

Truman, Harry S

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

37.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

38.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

39.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

40.

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

41.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

42.

The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

Welch, Robert

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

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.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

48.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

49.

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

50.

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

Bunting, Basil