Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Marshalov, Boris

Best Quotes about Government

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Reagan, Ronald

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

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

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

Bertrand Russell

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

10.

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

Jackson, Andrew

11.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

12.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

13.

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

Voltaire

14.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

15.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

16.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

17.

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

18.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

22.

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

23.

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

Caldwell, John S.

24.

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

Melbourne, Lord

25.

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

26.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

27.

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

28.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

29.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

30.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

31.

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

32.

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

Douglas, William O.

33.

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

Updike, John

34.

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

Friedman, Milton

35.

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

36.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

38.

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

Baluch, Joy

39.

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

Bunting, Basil

40.

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

41.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

42.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

43.

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

Russell, Bertrand

44.

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