Motivational Quotes

Government

Generosity is a part of my character, and I therefore hasten to assure this Government that I will never make an allegation of dishonesty against it wherever a simple explanation of stupidity will suffice.

- Lever, Leslie Baron

Best Quotes about Government

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

Proverb, French

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

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

Douglas, William O.

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

Caldwell, John S.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

10.

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

Herbert, A. P.

11.

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

Melbourne, Lord

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

15.

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

16.

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

George W. Bush

17.

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

H. L. Mencken

18.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

19.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

20.

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

Voltaire

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Lever, Leslie Baron

24.

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

Durant, William J.

25.

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

Baxter, Beverley

26.

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

Cousin, Victor

27.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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.

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

30.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

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

Richard M. Nixon

32.

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

33.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

34.

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

Updike, John

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.

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

Hume, David

37.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

38.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

39.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

40.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

41.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

42.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

43.

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

44.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

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

46.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

47.

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

Shaw, George Bernard

48.

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

49.

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

Gardner, John W.

50.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon