Motivational Quotes

Government

Office without pay makes thieves.

- Proverb, German

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

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

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

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

Reston, James

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

12.

The point to remember is what government gives it must first take away

Caldwell, John S.

13.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Richard M. Nixon

14.

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

15.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

16.

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

17.

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

Baluch, Joy

18.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

19.

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

20.

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

Murray, Bill

21.

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

Herbert, A. P.

22.

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

H. L. Mencken

23.

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

24.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

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

26.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

27.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

28.

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

29.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

30.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

31.

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

Friedman, Milton

32.

In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?

Proverb, French

33.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

35.

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

36.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

37.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

38.

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

Kempton, Murray

39.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

40.

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

George W. Bush

41.

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

42.

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

Reagan, Ronald

43.

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

Douglas, William O.

44.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

45.

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

Hospers, John

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Voltaire

50.

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