Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

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

Kempton, Murray

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

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

Fred Thompson

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

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

10.

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

Bob Wells

11.

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

12.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

13.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

14.

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

Einstein, Albert

15.

Locke, John

16.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

17.

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

18.

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

Caldwell, John S.

19.

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

Reston, James

20.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Richard M. Nixon

26.

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

Melbourne, Lord

27.

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

28.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

29.

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

Hospers, John

30.

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

31.

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

Burns, George

32.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

33.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

34.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

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

36.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

37.

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

38.

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

Russell, Bertrand

39.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

40.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Roosevelt, Theodore

41.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Updike, John

42.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

43.

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

Updike, John

44.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

45.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

46.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

47.

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

48.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

49.

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

50.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.