Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

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

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

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

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

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

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

Jackson, Andrew

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

10.

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

11.

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

Rostand, Jean

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.

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

14.

The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

Welch, Robert

15.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Hume, David

16.

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

17.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

19.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

20.

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

21.

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

Reston, James

22.

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

Bertrand Russell

23.

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

Reston, James

24.

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

Fred Thompson

25.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

26.

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

27.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

28.

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

Reagan, Ronald

29.

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

Voltaire

30.

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

31.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

32.

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

33.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

34.

You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

George W. Bush

35.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

36.

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

H. L. Mencken

37.

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

Douglas, William O.

38.

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.

39.

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

40.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

41.

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

42.

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

Hospers, John

43.

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

Gardner, John W.

44.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

45.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

46.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

47.

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

Friedman, Milton

48.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

49.

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

50.

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

Caldwell, John S.