Motivational Quotes

Government

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about 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

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

Solon

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

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

Government can be bigger than any of the players on the field as a referee, but it has no right to become one of the players.

Igleheart, Austin

10.

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

11.

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

Proverb, French

12.

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

13.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

14.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

15.

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

Baluch, Joy

16.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

17.

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.

18.

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

Reston, James

19.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

20.

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

21.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

22.

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

H. L. Mencken

23.

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

Voltaire

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 tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Reagan, Ronald

26.

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Bastiat, Frederic

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

31.

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

Murray, Bill

32.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

33.

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

Caldwell, John S.

34.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

35.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

36.

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

Gladstone, William E.

37.

Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

Burns, George

38.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

39.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

40.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

41.

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

42.

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

Updike, John

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

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.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

49.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

50.

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

Melbourne, Lord