Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Gladstone, William E.

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

Marshalov, Boris

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

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

Burns, George

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

10.

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

Voltaire

11.

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

12.

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

Cousin, Victor

13.

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

Gardner, John W.

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

17.

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

Friedman, Milton

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Updike, John

22.

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

Baxter, Beverley

23.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

24.

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

Russell, Bertrand

25.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

26.

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

27.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

28.

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

Solon

29.

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

Fred Thompson

30.

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

H. L. Mencken

31.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

32.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

33.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

35.

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

Truman, Harry S

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.

For its part, Government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways -- to the voices of quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices, and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Nixon, Richard M.

38.

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

39.

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

Reston, James

40.

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

41.

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

Baluch, Joy

42.

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

43.

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

44.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

45.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

46.

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

Caldwell, John S.

47.

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

Lawson, Nigel

48.

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

49.

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

Bunting, Basil

50.

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright