Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

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

Fred Thompson

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

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.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

10.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

Locke, John

11.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

12.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

13.

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

George W. Bush

14.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

15.

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

H. L. Mencken

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.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

18.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

19.

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

20.

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

Themistocles

21.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

22.

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

Friedman, Milton

23.

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

Jackson, Andrew

24.

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

25.

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

Gardner, John W.

26.

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

Welch, Robert

27.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

28.

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

Updike, John

29.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

30.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

31.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

32.

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

Truman, Harry S

33.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

Solon

37.

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

Reagan, Ronald

38.

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.

Baudrillard, Jean

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

43.

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

Bob Wells

44.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

45.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.