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

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Jefferson, Thomas

The point to remember is what government gives it must first take away

Caldwell, John S.

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

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

Herbert, A. P.

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

Marshalov, Boris

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

Welch, Robert

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

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

10.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

11.

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

12.

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

Themistocles

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

George W. Bush

16.

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

Friedman, Milton

17.

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

Truman, Harry S

18.

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

19.

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

Reston, James

20.

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

21.

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

Dulles, John Foster

22.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

23.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Reagan, Ronald

29.

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

Baxter, Beverley

30.

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

Rostand, Jean

31.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

32.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

33.

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

Updike, John

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.

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

Burns, George

36.

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

Durant, William J.

37.

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

38.

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

Bob Wells

39.

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

Hospers, John

40.

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

Solon

41.

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

Lawson, Nigel

42.

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

43.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

44.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

45.

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

Voltaire

46.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

47.

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

48.

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

Reagan, Ronald

49.

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

50.

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