Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Pittacus

Best Quotes about Government

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

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

Wallis, W. Allen

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

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

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

10.

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

Baxter, Beverley

11.

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

Jackson, Andrew

12.

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

Dulles, John Foster

13.

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

Crockett, Davy

14.

Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

Burns, George

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Marshalov, Boris

19.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

20.

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

21.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

22.

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Crossman, Richard

23.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

24.

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

25.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

26.

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

27.

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

Reagan, Ronald

28.

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain.

Herbert, A. P.

29.

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

Voltaire

30.

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

Fred Thompson

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.

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

33.

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

Welch, Robert

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

37.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

38.

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

Pittacus

39.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

40.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

41.

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

George W. Bush

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.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

46.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

47.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Bertrand Russell