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

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

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

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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.

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

Fred Thompson

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

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.

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

Reston, James

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

10.

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

11.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

12.

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Bastiat, Frederic

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Lawson, Nigel

16.

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

17.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

18.

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

19.

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

20.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

21.

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

22.

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

Updike, John

23.

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

24.

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

Melbourne, Lord

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Bob Wells

28.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

29.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

30.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

31.

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

Gladstone, William E.

32.

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

33.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

34.

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

Voltaire

35.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

36.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

37.

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

38.

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

39.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

40.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

41.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

42.

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

43.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

44.

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

Bunting, Basil

45.

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

46.

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

Welch, Robert

47.

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

48.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

49.

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

Hospers, John

50.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry