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

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

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

Murray, Bill

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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

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

Solon

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

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

10.

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.

11.

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

12.

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Roosevelt, Theodore

13.

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

George W. Bush

14.

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

Voltaire

15.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

16.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

17.

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

Herbert, A. P.

18.

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

Reagan, Ronald

19.

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

20.

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

Russell, Bertrand

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

30.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

31.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

32.

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

Gladstone, William E.

33.

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

Themistocles

34.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

35.

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

36.

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

Burns, George

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Friedman, Milton

40.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

41.

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

Updike, John

42.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

43.

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

44.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

45.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

46.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

47.

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

48.

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

49.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

50.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.