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

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

Voltaire

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

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

Bob Wells

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

Welch, Robert

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

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

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

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

Kocher, Gerhard

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

10.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

11.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

12.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

13.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

14.

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

15.

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

Durant, William J.

16.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

17.

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Crossman, Richard

18.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

19.

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

Pittacus

20.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

21.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

22.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

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.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Bunting, Basil

27.

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

Marshalov, Boris

28.

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.

29.

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

Fred Thompson

30.

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

Melbourne, Lord

31.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

36.

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

37.

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

Gladstone, William E.

38.

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

39.

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

Reston, James

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Reston, James

48.

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

49.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

50.

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