Motivational Quotes

Government

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

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

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

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

George W. Bush

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

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

10.

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

11.

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

Proverb, French

12.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

13.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

14.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

15.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

16.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

17.

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

18.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

19.

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

20.

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

Douglas, William O.

21.

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.

22.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life -- this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

O'Rourke, P. J.

23.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

24.

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

Burns, George

25.

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

Caldwell, John S.

26.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

27.

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

Lawson, Nigel

28.

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

Crockett, Davy

29.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

Sade, Marquis De

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Updike, John

34.

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.

35.

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

Richard M. Nixon

36.

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

Voltaire

37.

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

Baxter, Beverley

38.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

39.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

40.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

41.

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

Pittacus

42.

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

Marshalov, Boris

43.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

44.

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

Gladstone, William E.

45.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

46.

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

Baluch, Joy

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De