Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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.

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

H. L. Mencken

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Durant, William J.

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

Bunting, Basil

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Crockett, Davy

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

10.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

11.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

12.

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

13.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

17.

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

Gardner, John W.

18.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

19.

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

20.

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

21.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

22.

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

Voltaire

23.

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

24.

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

Bob Wells

25.

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

26.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

27.

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright

28.

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

Rostand, Jean

29.

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

Russell, Bertrand

30.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

31.

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

Proverb, French

32.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

33.

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

34.

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

George W. Bush

35.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

36.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

37.

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

Bertrand Russell

38.

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

39.

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

Melbourne, Lord

40.

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

41.

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

Murray, Bill

42.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

43.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

48.

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

Pittacus

49.

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

50.

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

Welch, Robert