Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

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

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

Jackson, Andrew

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

Wallis, W. Allen

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.

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

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

10.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

11.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

12.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Douglas, William O.

16.

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

Voltaire

17.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

21.

But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.

Bunting, Basil

22.

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

23.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Friedman, Milton

27.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

28.

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

Voltaire

29.

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

Solon

30.

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

31.

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

Cousin, Victor

32.

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

33.

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

Marshalov, Boris

34.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

35.

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

Baluch, Joy

36.

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.

37.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Lippmann, Walter

38.

If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to -- and you will -- leave, and be something else.

Noonan, Peggy

39.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

40.

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

George W. Bush

41.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

42.

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

Bob Wells

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

48.

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

Gardner, John W.

49.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

50.

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