Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

Best Quotes about Government

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

Bastiat, Frederic

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

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

Murray, Bill

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

Bob Wells

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

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

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

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Carlyle, Thomas

10.

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

Marshalov, Boris

11.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

12.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

13.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Jefferson, Thomas

14.

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

Kempton, Murray

15.

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

16.

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

Einstein, Albert

17.

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

Lawson, Nigel

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

21.

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

Themistocles

22.

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

Shaw, George Bernard

23.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

24.

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

Herbert, A. P.

25.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

26.

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

Welch, Robert

27.

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

Truman, Harry S

28.

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

29.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

30.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Friedman, Milton

31.

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

32.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

33.

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

34.

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

Reston, James

35.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

36.

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

37.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

38.

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

Durant, William J.

39.

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

Voltaire

40.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

41.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

42.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

43.

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

Bunting, Basil

44.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

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

Reston, James

48.

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

Bertrand Russell

49.

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