Motivational Quotes

Government

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

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

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

Douglas, William O.

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

George W. Bush

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

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

10.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

11.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Updike, John

12.

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

13.

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Updike, John

14.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

15.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

16.

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

Burns, George

17.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

18.

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

19.

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

Baxter, Beverley

20.

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

21.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

22.

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

23.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

24.

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

Cousin, Victor

25.

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

Murray, Bill

26.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

27.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

28.

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

Bertrand Russell

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

33.

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

34.

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

Reagan, Ronald

35.

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

Melbourne, Lord

36.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

37.

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

Truman, Harry S

38.

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.

39.

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

Solon

40.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

41.

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

Russell, Bertrand

42.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

43.

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

Caldwell, John S.

44.

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

45.

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

Reston, James

46.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

47.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

48.

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