Motivational Quotes

Government

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

- Kennedy, John F.

Best Quotes about Government

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

Kocher, Gerhard

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

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

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

Burns, George

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

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

Caldwell, John S.

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

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

Crockett, Davy

10.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

11.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

12.

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

13.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

14.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

15.

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

Murray, Bill

16.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

17.

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.

18.

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

Lawson, Nigel

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

23.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

24.

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

Truman, Harry S

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Richard M. Nixon

28.

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

Herbert, A. P.

29.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

30.

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

Melbourne, Lord

31.

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

32.

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

33.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

34.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

35.

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

Fred Thompson

36.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

37.

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

Einstein, Albert

38.

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

Voltaire

39.

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

Gladstone, William E.

40.

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

Hospers, John

41.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Updike, John

42.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

43.

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

Baxter, Beverley

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

48.

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

Friedman, Milton

49.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

50.

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.