Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

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

Updike, John

Lao-Tzu

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

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

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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

10.

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

11.

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

Hospers, John

12.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

13.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

14.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

15.

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

Voltaire

16.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

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

Proverb, French

20.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

21.

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

22.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

23.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

24.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

25.

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

26.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

27.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

28.

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

29.

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

Gladstone, William E.

30.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

31.

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

Gardner, John W.

32.

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

Marshalov, Boris

33.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

34.

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

Kempton, Murray

35.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

36.

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

Reston, James

37.

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

Voltaire

38.

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

Murray, Bill

39.

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

40.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

41.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

42.

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

43.

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

Burns, George

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.

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

George W. Bush

46.

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

47.

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

Friedman, Milton

48.

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

49.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

50.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.