Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Welch, Robert

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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

George W. Bush

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Voltaire

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

Fred Thompson

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

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

Burns, George

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

10.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

11.

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

12.

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

Richard M. Nixon

13.

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

14.

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

Solon

15.

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

Dulles, John Foster

16.

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

Crockett, Davy

17.

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

Truman, Harry S

18.

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

19.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

20.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Pittacus

25.

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

Reston, James

26.

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign. That is the essence of the problem.

Mirabeau, Comte De

27.

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

Updike, John

28.

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

29.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

30.

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

Bunting, Basil

31.

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

32.

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

Hume, David

33.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

34.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

35.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Reagan, Ronald

39.

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

40.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

41.

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

Lawson, Nigel

42.

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

43.

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

Jackson, Andrew

44.

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.

45.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

49.

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

50.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon