Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Reston, James

Best Quotes about Government

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

Douglas, William O.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Gladstone, William E.

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

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

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

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

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

Thomas Heatherwick

10.

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

Russell, Bertrand

11.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

12.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

13.

Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

Burns, George

14.

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

15.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Madison, James

16.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

H. L. Mencken

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.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Murray, Bill

24.

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

25.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

26.

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

Voltaire

27.

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

Cousin, Victor

28.

If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to -- and you will -- leave, and be something else.

Noonan, Peggy

29.

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

30.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

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

32.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

33.

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

Gardner, John W.

34.

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

Bunting, Basil

35.

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

36.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

37.

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

Pittacus

38.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

39.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

40.

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

Crockett, Davy

41.

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

Proverb, French

42.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Bob Wells

46.

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

47.

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

48.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.