Motivational Quotes

Government

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

- Madison, James

Best Quotes about Government

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

Pittacus

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire

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

The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

10.

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

11.

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

Burns, George

12.

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

Kempton, Murray

13.

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

Einstein, Albert

14.

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

15.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

16.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

17.

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

Hospers, John

18.

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

19.

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

Cousin, Victor

20.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

21.

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

Bertrand Russell

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

25.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Truman, Harry S

31.

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

32.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

33.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

34.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

35.

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

36.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

37.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

38.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

39.

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

Crockett, Davy

40.

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.

41.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Solon

45.

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

46.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

47.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

48.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

49.

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

Updike, John

50.

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.