Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Thomas Heatherwick

Best Quotes about Government

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

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Dulles, John Foster

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

Herbert, A. P.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Themistocles

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

10.

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

Updike, John

11.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

13.

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

Pittacus

14.

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

Voltaire

15.

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

Gardner, John W.

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

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

Melbourne, Lord

20.

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

21.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

22.

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

Richard M. Nixon

23.

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

Bunting, Basil

24.

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

Updike, John

25.

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

Friedman, Milton

26.

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

Russell, Bertrand

27.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Bertrand Russell

31.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Hume, David

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Crockett, Davy

35.

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.

36.

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

Gladstone, William E.

37.

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

Murray, Bill

38.

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

39.

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

Baluch, Joy

40.

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

Voltaire

41.

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

42.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

43.

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

44.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

45.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

46.

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

Welch, Robert

47.

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

Friedman, Milton

48.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

49.

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

50.

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