Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Pittacus

Best Quotes about Government

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 government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Gardner, John W.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Durant, William J.

Any government is potentially the worst client in the world you could ever possibly want to have.

Thomas Heatherwick

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

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

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

10.

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

11.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

12.

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

13.

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

Fred Thompson

14.

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.

15.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

16.

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

Jackson, Andrew

17.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

18.

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

Bertrand Russell

19.

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

Updike, John

20.

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

21.

The Athenians govern the Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife, govern me; your son governs you.

Themistocles

22.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

23.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

24.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

25.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

26.

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

George W. Bush

27.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

28.

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

29.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

30.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

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.

To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

Lawson, Nigel

33.

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

34.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

35.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

36.

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

37.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

38.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

39.

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

40.

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

Gladstone, William E.

41.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

42.

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

43.

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

Baluch, Joy

44.

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

45.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

46.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Updike, John

50.

But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.

Bunting, Basil