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

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

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

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

Updike, John

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

10.

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

11.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

12.

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

13.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

14.

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

Hume, David

15.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

16.

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

Richard M. Nixon

17.

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

Reston, James

18.

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

19.

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

Bertrand Russell

20.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

21.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

22.

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

Jackson, Andrew

23.

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

24.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

25.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

26.

The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.

Beecher, Henry Ward

27.

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

H. L. Mencken

28.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

29.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

30.

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

Updike, John

31.

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

Rostand, Jean

32.

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

Murray, Bill

33.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

34.

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

35.

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

Solon

36.

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

37.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

38.

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

39.

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

Hospers, John

40.

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

Welch, Robert

41.

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

Cousin, Victor

42.

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

43.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

45.

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

46.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

47.

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

48.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

49.

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

George W. Bush

50.

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