Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Jackson, Andrew

Best Quotes about Government

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

Douglas, William O.

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

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

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

Voltaire

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Reston, James

10.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

11.

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

Bob Wells

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

15.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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

Hospers, John

19.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

20.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

21.

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

H. L. Mencken

22.

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

Murray, Bill

23.

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

24.

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

Rostand, Jean

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

29.

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

30.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

31.

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

Caldwell, John S.

32.

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

Dulles, John Foster

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.

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

35.

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

Hume, David

36.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

37.

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

38.

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

Russell, Bertrand

39.

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

Lawson, Nigel

40.

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

Fred Thompson

41.

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

Reagan, Ronald

42.

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

43.

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

Solon

44.

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

45.

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

Pittacus

46.

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

Durant, William J.

47.

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

Reston, James

48.

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

49.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

50.

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

Burns, George