Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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

Baxter, Beverley

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

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

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

Reston, James

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

Murray, Bill

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

Gardner, John W.

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

10.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

11.

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

Proverb, French

12.

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

13.

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

George W. Bush

14.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

15.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Baluch, Joy

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Richard M. Nixon

25.

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

26.

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

Friedman, Milton

27.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

28.

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

Douglas, William O.

29.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

30.

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

31.

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

Friedman, Milton

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Welch, Robert

35.

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

36.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

37.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

39.

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

Caldwell, John S.

40.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

41.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Pittacus

45.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

46.

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

Solon

47.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Mencken, H. L.

48.

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

Reston, James

49.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

50.

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

H. L. Mencken