Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Reston, James

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

Lawson, Nigel

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

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

H. L. Mencken

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.

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

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

13.

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

Cousin, Victor

14.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

15.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

16.

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

Proverb, French

17.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

18.

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

Reston, James

19.

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

Herbert, A. P.

20.

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.

21.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

22.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

23.

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

Voltaire

24.

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

Friedman, Milton

25.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Richard M. Nixon

26.

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

27.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

28.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

29.

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

30.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

31.

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

Rostand, Jean

32.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

33.

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

Melbourne, Lord

34.

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

Solon

35.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

36.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

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.

38.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

39.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

43.

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

44.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

45.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

46.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

47.

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