Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Reagan, Ronald

Best Quotes about Government

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

Proverb, French

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

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

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

Themistocles

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

Jefferson, Thomas

10.

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

11.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Melbourne, Lord

12.

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

Truman, Harry S

13.

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

14.

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

Russell, Bertrand

15.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Marshalov, Boris

19.

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

20.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

21.

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

22.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

26.

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

Gladstone, William E.

27.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

28.

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

29.

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

Dulles, John Foster

30.

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

Einstein, Albert

31.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

32.

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

Friedman, Milton

33.

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

34.

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

Hume, David

35.

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

36.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

37.

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

Douglas, William O.

38.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

39.

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

40.

The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.

Sade, Marquis De

41.

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

Pittacus

42.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

43.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

44.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

45.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

49.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

50.

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