Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Reagan, Ronald

Best Quotes about Government

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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

Updike, John

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

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

Durant, William J.

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

Welch, Robert

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

Cousin, Victor

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

10.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

14.

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

Herbert, A. P.

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

21.

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

22.

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

Solon

23.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

24.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

25.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

26.

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Bastiat, Frederic

27.

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

Bertrand Russell

28.

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

29.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

30.

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

Douglas, William O.

31.

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

32.

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

Hospers, John

33.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

34.

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

Proverb, French

35.

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

36.

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

Russell, Bertrand

37.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

38.

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

39.

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

40.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

41.

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

Baluch, Joy

42.

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

Fred Thompson

43.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

44.

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.

45.

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

46.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

47.

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

48.

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

Reagan, Ronald

49.

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

H. L. Mencken

50.

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