Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Fred Thompson

Best Quotes about Government

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

Gardner, John W.

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

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.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Douglas, William O.

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.

10.

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

11.

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

Bob Wells

12.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

13.

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

14.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

15.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

16.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

17.

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

18.

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

Proverb, French

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

23.

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

Cousin, Victor

24.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

25.

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

Kempton, Murray

26.

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

Bertrand Russell

27.

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

Marshalov, Boris

28.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

29.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

34.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

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.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

39.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

40.

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

Pittacus

41.

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

Caldwell, John S.

42.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

43.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

44.

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

Solon

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

48.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

49.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

50.

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