Motivational Quotes

Government

The supply of government exceeds demand.

- Lapham, Lewis H.

Best Quotes about Government

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

Bunting, Basil

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

Russell, Bertrand

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

Proverb, French

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

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.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

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

Baluch, Joy

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

10.

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

11.

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

Fred Thompson

12.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

13.

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

14.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

15.

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

Reagan, Ronald

16.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

23.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

24.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

25.

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

Burns, George

26.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

27.

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

28.

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

Lawson, Nigel

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Friedman, Milton

32.

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

33.

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

Durant, William J.

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

George W. Bush

37.

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

38.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

39.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

40.

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

Truman, Harry S

41.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

42.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

43.

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

Marshalov, Boris

44.

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

45.

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

Douglas, William O.

46.

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

47.

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

Themistocles

48.

We have the best government that money can buy.