Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Reagan, Ronald

Best Quotes about Government

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

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.

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

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

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

Kocher, Gerhard

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

10.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

11.

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

12.

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

Reston, James

13.

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

14.

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

Jackson, Andrew

15.

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

Welch, Robert

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Voltaire

20.

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

Proverb, French

21.

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

22.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

23.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

24.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

25.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

26.

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

27.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

Friedman, Milton

31.

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

Caldwell, John S.

32.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

33.

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

34.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

35.

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

Reagan, Ronald

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Herbert, A. P.

39.

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

40.

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

Rostand, Jean

41.

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

42.

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

Pittacus

43.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

44.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

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

Updike, John

46.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

47.

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

Baluch, Joy

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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