Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Marshalov, Boris

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

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

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

Reston, James

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

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

Herbert, A. P.

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

Fred Thompson

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

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

10.

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

Friedman, Milton

11.

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

12.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

13.

The Athenians govern the Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife, govern me; your son governs you.

Themistocles

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

18.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

19.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

20.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

21.

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

Welch, Robert

22.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

23.

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

Crockett, Davy

24.

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

25.

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

George W. Bush

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Reagan, Ronald

29.

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

Pittacus

30.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

31.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

32.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

33.

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

Burns, George

34.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

35.

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

36.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

37.

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

Lawson, Nigel

38.

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

Reston, James

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 something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Roosevelt, Theodore

42.

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

43.

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

Richard M. Nixon

44.

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

45.

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

Rostand, Jean

46.

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

Proverb, French

47.

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

Jackson, Andrew

48.

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

Updike, John

49.

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

50.

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.