Motivational Quotes

Government

Office without pay makes thieves.

- Proverb, German

Best Quotes about Government

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

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

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

Reston, James

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

Reagan, Ronald

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Lippmann, Walter

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

10.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

11.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

12.

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

13.

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

Jackson, Andrew

14.

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

15.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

16.

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

Voltaire

17.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

18.

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.

19.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

20.

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

Truman, Harry S

21.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

22.

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

23.

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

Burns, George

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Themistocles

29.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

30.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

31.

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

32.

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

Bertrand Russell

33.

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

Reagan, Ronald

34.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

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

36.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

37.

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

Bunting, Basil

38.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

39.

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

H. L. Mencken

40.

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

Herbert, A. P.

41.

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

42.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

43.

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

44.

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

Updike, John

45.

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.

46.

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

Dulles, John Foster

47.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

48.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

49.

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

50.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John