Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Reston, James

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

Pittacus

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

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

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Reston, James

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

Proverb, French

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

Russell, Bertrand

10.

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

Baxter, Beverley

11.

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

Herbert, A. P.

12.

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

Melbourne, Lord

13.

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Roosevelt, Theodore

14.

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

Truman, Harry S

15.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

16.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

17.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

18.

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

19.

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

Einstein, Albert

20.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

21.

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

22.

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

23.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

24.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

25.

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

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

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

28.

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

Hume, David

29.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

30.

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

31.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

32.

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

George W. Bush

33.

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

Gardner, John W.

34.

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

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.

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

37.

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

Douglas, William O.

38.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

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.

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

Dulles, John Foster

41.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

42.

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

Themistocles

43.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

44.

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

Crockett, Davy

45.

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

H. L. Mencken

46.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

50.

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.