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

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

Cousin, Victor

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

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

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

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

Hume, David

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Douglas, William O.

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

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

Einstein, Albert

10.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

11.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

12.

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

13.

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

Fred Thompson

14.

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

Caldwell, John S.

15.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

16.

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

Burns, George

17.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

H. L. Mencken

22.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

23.

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

Reston, James

24.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

Solon

25.

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

Kempton, Murray

26.

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

Baluch, Joy

27.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

28.

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

Truman, Harry S

29.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Pittacus

34.

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

35.

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

Lawson, Nigel

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

40.

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

Melbourne, Lord

41.

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

42.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

43.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

44.

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

Friedman, Milton

45.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

46.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

47.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

48.

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

Baxter, Beverley

49.

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

50.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire