Motivational Quotes

Government

We have the best government that money can buy.

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Government

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

Shaw, George Bernard

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

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

Reagan, Ronald

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

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

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.

Pittacus

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

10.

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

Richard M. Nixon

11.

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

Douglas, William O.

12.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

13.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

14.

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

Updike, John

15.

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

Baxter, Beverley

16.

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

H. L. Mencken

17.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

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

Durant, William J.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

24.

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

Hospers, John

25.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

26.

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

Solon

27.

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

Bertrand Russell

28.

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.

29.

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

Themistocles

30.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

31.

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

Voltaire

32.

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

33.

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

Gardner, John W.

34.

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

35.

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

Lawson, Nigel

36.

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

Marshalov, Boris

37.

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

38.

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

Friedman, Milton

39.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Russell, Bertrand

43.

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

Proverb, French

44.

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

45.

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright

46.

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

47.

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

48.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

49.

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

Reston, James

50.

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