Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

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

Rostand, Jean

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

Hospers, John

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

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

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

Friedman, Milton

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

10.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

11.

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

12.

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

Friedman, Milton

13.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

14.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

15.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Douglas, William O.

20.

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

21.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

22.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

23.

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

24.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

25.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Fred Thompson

29.

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

30.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

31.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

32.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

33.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

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.

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

36.

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

Baxter, Beverley

37.

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

38.

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

Bob Wells

39.

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

40.

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

Bunting, Basil

41.

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

42.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

43.

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

44.

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

Voltaire

45.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

46.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

47.

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

48.

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

Reagan, Ronald

49.

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

Melbourne, Lord

50.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert