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

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

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

Themistocles

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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.

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

Proverb, French

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

Kempton, Murray

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

Bunting, Basil

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

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

10.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

11.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

12.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Madison, James

13.

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

Updike, John

14.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

16.

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

17.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

18.

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

Reston, James

19.

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

Richard M. Nixon

20.

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

Voltaire

21.

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

22.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

23.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

24.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

25.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

26.

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

Bismarck, Otto Von

27.

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

Hume, David

28.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Durant, William J.

32.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

33.

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

34.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

35.

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

Baxter, Beverley

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

39.

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

40.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

41.

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

42.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

43.

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

Douglas, William O.

44.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

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

46.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

47.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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