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

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

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

Burns, George

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

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

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

10.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

11.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

12.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

13.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

14.

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

Reston, James

15.

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

Bunting, Basil

16.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

17.

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.

18.

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

19.

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

Rostand, Jean

20.

Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.

Baxter, Beverley

21.

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

22.

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

Russell, Bertrand

23.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

24.

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

Bertrand Russell

25.

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray

26.

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

Lawson, Nigel

27.

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

Murray, Bill

28.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

29.

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

Reston, James

30.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

31.

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

32.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

33.

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

Friedman, Milton

34.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

35.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

38.

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

Fred Thompson

39.

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Sir Winston Churchill

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

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

Reagan, Ronald

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Proverb, French

48.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

49.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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