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

Welch, Robert

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

Solon

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

Voltaire

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

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

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

Kempton, Murray

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

Bertrand Russell

10.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

11.

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

12.

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

Burns, George

13.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

14.

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

15.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

16.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

17.

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

18.

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

Caldwell, John S.

19.

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

Voltaire

20.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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

Durant, William J.

24.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

25.

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

Fred Thompson

26.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

27.

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

Truman, Harry S

28.

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

Einstein, Albert

29.

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

30.

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

Updike, John

31.

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

32.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

33.

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

Douglas, William O.

34.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

35.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

36.

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

37.

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

George W. Bush

38.

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

Baxter, Beverley

39.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

40.

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

Reston, James

41.

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

Melbourne, Lord

42.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

43.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

44.

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

Bob Wells

45.

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

Hume, David

46.

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

Lawson, Nigel

47.

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

48.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

49.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

50.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De