Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- George W. Bush

Best Quotes about 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

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

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

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

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

Rostand, Jean

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Mencken, H. L.

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

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.

10.

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

Caldwell, John S.

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

15.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

16.

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

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.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

19.

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

20.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

21.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

22.

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

Bob Wells

23.

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

Herbert, A. P.

24.

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

25.

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

Burns, George

26.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

27.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

28.

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

Reston, James

29.

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

Jackson, Andrew

30.

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

Kempton, Murray

31.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

32.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

33.

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

Hume, David

34.

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

Updike, John

35.

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

36.

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

Crockett, Davy

37.

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

38.

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

Bunting, Basil

39.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

40.

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

Updike, John

41.

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

42.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

43.

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

Welch, Robert

44.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

45.

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

46.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

47.

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

Voltaire

48.

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

Baxter, Beverley

49.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

50.

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