Motivational Quotes

Government

Office without pay makes thieves.

- Proverb, German

Best Quotes about Government

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

Rostand, Jean

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

Jackson, Andrew

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

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

Limbaugh, Rush

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

10.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

11.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

18.

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

19.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

23.

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

24.

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

Reagan, Ronald

25.

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.

26.

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

H. L. Mencken

27.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

28.

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

Marshalov, Boris

29.

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

30.

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

Reagan, Ronald

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.

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

Updike, John

33.

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

Hume, David

34.

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

35.

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

Burns, George

36.

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

Reston, James

37.

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

Fred Thompson

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

41.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

42.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Voltaire

47.

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

48.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

Shaw, George Bernard

49.

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

Friedman, Milton

50.

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

Cousin, Victor