Motivational Quotes

Government

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

- Topes, Lord Justice

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government.

President Barack Obama

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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

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

Burns, George

10.

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

11.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

12.

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

13.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

14.

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

Hume, David

15.

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

16.

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

17.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

18.

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

Reagan, Ronald

19.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

20.

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

Bob Wells

21.

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

Bertrand Russell

22.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

23.

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

24.

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

Hospers, John

25.

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

26.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

27.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

28.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

29.

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

Herbert, A. P.

30.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

31.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Socrates

32.

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.

33.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

34.

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

35.

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

Murray, Bill

36.

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

Richard M. Nixon

37.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

38.

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

Proverb, French

39.

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.

40.

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

41.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

42.

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

Lawson, Nigel

43.

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

Fred Thompson

44.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

45.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

46.

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

Voltaire

47.

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

Dulles, John Foster

48.

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

Durant, William J.

49.

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