Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

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

H. L. Mencken

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

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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

Amsterdam, Maury

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.

10.

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

Voltaire

11.

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

Reagan, Ronald

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Cousin, Victor

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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

Kempton, Murray

19.

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

20.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

21.

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

Melbourne, Lord

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Truman, Harry S

25.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

26.

Mills, C. Wright

27.

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

28.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

29.

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

Marshalov, Boris

30.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Proverb, French

34.

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

35.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

36.

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

John Kenneth Galbraith

37.

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

Updike, John

38.

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

Jackson, Andrew

39.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

40.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

41.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

42.

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

43.

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

Baluch, Joy

44.

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

45.

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

46.

It is easy to rule over the good.