Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Russell, Bertrand

Best Quotes about Government

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

Russell, Bertrand

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

Crockett, Davy

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

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

Einstein, Albert

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

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

H. L. Mencken

10.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

11.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

12.

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

Friedman, Milton

13.

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

14.

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.

15.

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

Murray, Bill

16.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

17.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

18.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

19.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

20.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

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

Hume, David

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

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

George W. Bush

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.

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

32.

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

Burns, George

33.

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

34.

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

Gardner, John W.

35.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

36.

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

Bunting, Basil

37.

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

Rostand, Jean

38.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

39.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

40.

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

Caldwell, John S.

41.

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

42.

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

Herbert, A. P.

43.

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

Truman, Harry S

44.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

45.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

46.

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

47.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

48.

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

Durant, William J.

49.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

50.

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