Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Updike, John

Best Quotes about Government

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

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

Marshalov, Boris

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

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

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

Fred Thompson

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

Solon

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

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

Caldwell, John S.

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

Murray, Bill

10.

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

Themistocles

11.

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

Friedman, Milton

12.

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

Kempton, Murray

13.

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

Updike, John

14.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

15.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

16.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

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

Reston, James

18.

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

Crockett, Davy

19.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

John Kenneth Galbraith

24.

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

25.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

26.

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

Russell, Bertrand

27.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

28.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

29.

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

30.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

31.

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

32.

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

Proverb, French

33.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

34.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

35.

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

H. L. Mencken

36.

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

37.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

38.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Mencken, H. L.

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Baxter, Beverley

42.

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

Richard M. Nixon

43.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

44.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

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

Hospers, John

46.

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

47.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

48.

Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.

Baluch, Joy

49.

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

50.

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

Gardner, John W.