Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Durant, William J.

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

Hume, David

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

Gardner, John W.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

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.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

10.

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

Lawson, Nigel

11.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Voltaire

12.

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain.

Herbert, A. P.

13.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

14.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

15.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

16.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

17.

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

Welch, Robert

18.

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

19.

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

Jackson, Andrew

20.

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

Baxter, Beverley

21.

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

22.

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

Bertrand Russell

23.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Lippmann, Walter

24.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

25.

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

26.

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

27.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

28.

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

Caldwell, John S.

29.

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

30.

Government can be bigger than any of the players on the field as a referee, but it has no right to become one of the players.

Igleheart, Austin

31.

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

Bunting, Basil

32.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

33.

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

Douglas, William O.

34.

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

35.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

36.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

37.

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

38.

You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

George W. Bush

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

44.

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

45.

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Updike, John

46.

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

47.

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

Themistocles

48.

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

Reston, James

49.

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

Reagan, Ronald

50.

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