Motivational Quotes

Government

Any cook should be able to run the country.

- Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

Douglas, William O.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Updike, John

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

13.

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

14.

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

Friedman, Milton

15.

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

16.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

17.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Jefferson, Thomas

18.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

19.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

20.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

21.

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

Welch, Robert

22.

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

Truman, Harry S

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Hume, David

26.

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

Gardner, John W.

27.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

28.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

29.

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

Russell, Bertrand

30.

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

Richard M. Nixon

31.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

32.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

33.

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

Friedman, Milton

34.

That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.

Pittacus

35.

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

Hospers, John

36.

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

37.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

38.

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.

39.

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

Voltaire

40.

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

41.

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

Themistocles

42.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

43.

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

Bunting, Basil

44.

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

Einstein, Albert

45.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

46.

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

47.

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

48.

The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations. But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

49.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

50.

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

Limbaugh, Rush