Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Updike, John

Best Quotes about Government

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

Dulles, John Foster

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

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

Hume, David

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

10.

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

Bunting, Basil

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Marshalov, Boris

14.

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

Herbert, A. P.

15.

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

16.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

17.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

18.

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

19.

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

20.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Crockett, Davy

24.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Richard M. Nixon

29.

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

30.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

35.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

36.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

37.

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

38.

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

Reston, James

39.

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

40.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

41.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

42.

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

43.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

44.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

45.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

46.

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