Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Updike, John

Best Quotes about Government

The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Proverb, French

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Gardner, John W.

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

Updike, John

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

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

10.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

11.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

12.

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

Baluch, Joy

13.

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

14.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

15.

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

16.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

17.

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

Voltaire

18.

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

19.

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

Hospers, John

20.

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

21.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

22.

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

Friedman, Milton

23.

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

Gladstone, William E.

24.

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

Updike, John

25.

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

26.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

27.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

28.

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

29.

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

Solon

30.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

31.

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

Russell, Bertrand

32.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

33.

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

Dulles, John Foster

34.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

35.

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

36.

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

Pittacus

37.

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

Themistocles

38.

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

39.

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

Fred Thompson

40.

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

41.

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

42.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

43.

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

Truman, Harry S

44.

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

45.

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

Baxter, Beverley

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

50.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y