Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

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

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

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

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

Updike, John

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

Jackson, Andrew

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

13.

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

Murray, Bill

14.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

15.

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

16.

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

17.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

18.

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

Herbert, A. P.

19.

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

Friedman, Milton

20.

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

Welch, Robert

21.

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

Rostand, Jean

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.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

24.

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

25.

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

Einstein, Albert

26.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

27.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

28.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

33.

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

Kempton, Murray

34.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

35.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

36.

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

37.

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

Hume, David

38.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

39.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

40.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

41.

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

Marshalov, Boris

42.

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

Dulles, John Foster

43.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

44.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Solon

48.

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

George W. Bush

49.

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

50.

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