Motivational Quotes

Government

It is easy to rule over the good.

- Plautus, Titus Maccius

Best Quotes about Government

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

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

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.

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

Wallis, W. Allen

10.

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

Burns, George

11.

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

Dulles, John Foster

12.

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

13.

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

Baxter, Beverley

14.

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

Fred Thompson

15.

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

16.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

17.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

18.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Roosevelt, Theodore

19.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

20.

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

Rostand, Jean

21.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

22.

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

Murray, Bill

23.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Voltaire

24.

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

25.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

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

Solon

29.

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

Reston, James

30.

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

Cousin, Victor

31.

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

Reston, James

32.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

33.

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

Voltaire

34.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

35.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

36.

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

Pittacus

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

43.

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

44.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

45.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

46.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

47.

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

Kempton, Murray

48.

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

H. L. Mencken

49.

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

50.

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

Bunting, Basil