Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Reagan, Ronald

Best Quotes about Government

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

Proverb, French

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

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

Crockett, Davy

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

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

Jackson, Andrew

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

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

Updike, John

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

10.

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

Melbourne, Lord

11.

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

12.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

13.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Douglas, William O.

17.

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

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

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

20.

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

Friedman, Milton

21.

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

Solon

22.

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray

23.

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

Russell, Bertrand

24.

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.

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

28.

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

George W. Bush

29.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

31.

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.

32.

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

Pittacus

33.

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

Fred Thompson

34.

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

35.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

36.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

37.

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

38.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

39.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

40.

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

Bertrand Russell

41.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Lippmann, Walter

42.

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

Truman, Harry S

43.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

44.

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

45.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

46.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

50.

But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.

Bunting, Basil