Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Reston, James

Best Quotes about Government

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

Crockett, Davy

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

Gardner, John W.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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

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.

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

11.

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

12.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

13.

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

Fred Thompson

14.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

15.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

16.

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

17.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

18.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

19.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

20.

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

Reston, James

21.

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

Baluch, Joy

22.

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

23.

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

Solon

24.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

25.

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

Bob Wells

26.

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

Proverb, French

27.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

28.

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, then everybody disagrees.

Marshalov, Boris

29.

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

30.

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

Melbourne, Lord

31.

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

Friedman, Milton

32.

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

Reagan, Ronald

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

37.

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

38.

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

Richard M. Nixon

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

46.

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

47.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

48.

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

Voltaire

49.

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

Reagan, Ronald

50.

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