Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Baxter, Beverley

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.

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

Crockett, Davy

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

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.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

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

Durant, William J.

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.

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

11.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

12.

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

Voltaire

13.

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

Updike, John

14.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Roosevelt, Theodore

15.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

16.

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

Gardner, John W.

17.

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

18.

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

Bertrand Russell

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Douglas, William O.

22.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

23.

The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.

Beecher, Henry Ward

24.

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

25.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

26.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

27.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

28.

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

Rostand, Jean

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

Melbourne, Lord

31.

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

Kempton, Murray

32.

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

Hospers, John

33.

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

Welch, Robert

34.

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

Murray, Bill

35.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

36.

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

Reagan, Ronald

37.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

38.

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

39.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

43.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

44.

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

Updike, John

45.

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