Motivational Quotes

Government

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

- Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

Best Quotes about Government

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

Hospers, John

That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.

Pittacus

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

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

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

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Jefferson, Thomas

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

10.

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

11.

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

Updike, John

12.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

13.

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.

14.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

15.

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

16.

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

Marshalov, Boris

17.

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

18.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

19.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

20.

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

21.

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

Reston, James

22.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

23.

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

Updike, John

24.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

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

Reston, James

26.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

27.

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

Russell, Bertrand

28.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life -- this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

O'Rourke, P. J.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Richard M. Nixon

32.

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

33.

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

Bertrand Russell

34.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

35.

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

Voltaire

36.

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

Bob Wells

37.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

Gardner, John W.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Themistocles

42.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

43.

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

Douglas, William O.

44.

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

Baxter, Beverley

45.

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

46.

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

Burns, George

47.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

48.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

49.

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

Caldwell, John S.

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