Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Jackson, Andrew

Best Quotes about Government

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

Durant, William J.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

H. L. Mencken

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

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

10.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

11.

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

Rostand, Jean

12.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

13.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

14.

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.

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.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Reagan, Ronald

19.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

20.

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

Welch, Robert

21.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

22.

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

Herbert, A. P.

23.

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

24.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

27.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

28.

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

29.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

30.

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

George W. Bush

31.

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

Solon

32.

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

33.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

40.

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

Bob Wells

41.

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

Baluch, Joy

42.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

43.

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

Proverb, French

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Reagan, Ronald

47.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

48.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Friedman, Milton

49.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.