Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Melbourne, Lord

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Truman, Harry S

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

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

Kocher, Gerhard

Galbraith, John Kenneth

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

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

10.

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

Voltaire

11.

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

Hume, David

12.

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

Baxter, Beverley

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Reston, James

16.

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

Bob Wells

17.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

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

19.

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

Durant, William J.

20.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

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

Gardner, John W.

22.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

23.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

24.

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

25.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

26.

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

Burns, George

27.

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

Friedman, Milton

28.

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

Crockett, Davy

29.

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

Updike, John

30.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

31.

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

32.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

33.

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

Murray, Bill

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Solon

37.

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

Douglas, William O.

38.

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.

39.

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

Pittacus

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

43.

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

Cousin, Victor

44.

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

45.

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