Motivational Quotes

Government

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

- John Kenneth Galbraith

Best Quotes about Government

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

H. L. Mencken

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

Wallis, W. Allen

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

Proverb, French

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

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Baxter, Beverley

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

10.

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

Marshalov, Boris

11.

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

12.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

13.

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

14.

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

Bertrand Russell

15.

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

Kempton, Murray

16.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Melbourne, Lord

17.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

18.

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

19.

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

20.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

21.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

22.

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

Crockett, Davy

23.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

24.

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

25.

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.

26.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

28.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

29.

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

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.

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

Dulles, John Foster

32.

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

Gardner, John W.

33.

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

34.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

Locke, John

35.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

36.

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

Caldwell, John S.

37.

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

Bob Wells

38.

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

39.

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

Reston, James

40.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

41.

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

Lawson, Nigel

42.

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

43.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

44.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

45.

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

46.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

47.

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

48.

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

Hospers, John

49.

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

50.

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