Motivational Quotes

Government

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

- Kennedy, John F.

Best Quotes about Government

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

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.

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

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

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

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

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

10.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

11.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

12.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

13.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

14.

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

15.

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

Baluch, Joy

16.

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

Cousin, Victor

17.

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

Friedman, Milton

18.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

19.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

20.

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

Fred Thompson

21.

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

Hospers, John

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

25.

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

26.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Franklin, Benjamin

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Kempton, Murray

31.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

32.

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

Melbourne, Lord

33.

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

Baxter, Beverley

34.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

35.

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

36.

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

Crockett, Davy

37.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

38.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

39.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

40.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

41.

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.

42.

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

Updike, John

43.

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

Welch, Robert

44.

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

45.

Government can be bigger than any of the players on the field as a referee, but it has no right to become one of the players.

Igleheart, Austin

46.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

47.

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

48.

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

Reagan, Ronald

49.

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

50.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian