Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Solon

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

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

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

Reston, James

Heinlein, Robert

Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.

Baluch, Joy

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

Durant, William J.

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

Jackson, Andrew

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Updike, John

13.

Government can be bigger than any of the players on the field as a referee, but it has no right to become one of the players.

Igleheart, Austin

14.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

16.

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.

17.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

18.

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

19.

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

Proverb, French

20.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

21.

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

22.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

23.

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

Hospers, John

24.

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

25.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

26.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

27.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

28.

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

Herbert, A. P.

29.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

31.

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

H. L. Mencken

32.

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

33.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

34.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

35.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

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.

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

38.

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

39.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

40.

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

Lawson, Nigel

41.

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

42.

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

Burns, George

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

46.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

47.

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

Bunting, Basil

48.

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