Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Reston, James

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Limbaugh, Rush

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

Cousin, Victor

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

10.

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

Murray, Bill

11.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

12.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

13.

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

Hume, David

14.

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

15.

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

Russell, Bertrand

16.

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

Reston, James

17.

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

18.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

19.

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

Welch, Robert

20.

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

George W. Bush

21.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

22.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

23.

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

Solon

24.

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

H. L. Mencken

25.

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

26.

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

Bunting, Basil

27.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

28.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

29.

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

Melbourne, Lord

30.

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

31.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

32.

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

Truman, Harry S

33.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Herbert, A. P.

39.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

40.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

41.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

42.

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

43.

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

Proverb, French

44.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

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

Voltaire

46.

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

47.

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

Einstein, Albert

48.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

49.

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

Bertrand Russell

50.

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