Motivational Quotes

Government

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.

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

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

Caldwell, John S.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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

Melbourne, Lord

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

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

Gardner, John W.

10.

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

11.

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Roosevelt, Theodore

12.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

13.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

14.

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

15.

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

Marshalov, Boris

16.

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

17.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

18.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

19.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

20.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

21.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

22.

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

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.

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

Reagan, Ronald

25.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

26.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

27.

Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.

Baxter, Beverley

28.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

29.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

30.

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

Updike, John

31.

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.

32.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

33.

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

Dulles, John Foster

34.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

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

Pittacus

36.

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

Bertrand Russell

37.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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.

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

40.

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

Kempton, Murray

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

44.

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

Richard M. Nixon

45.

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

46.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

47.

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

Crockett, Davy

48.

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

49.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

50.

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

Baluch, Joy