Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

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

Crockett, Davy

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

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

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

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

Gardner, John W.

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

Hospers, John

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

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

Pittacus

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

Gladstone, William E.

10.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life -- this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

O'Rourke, P. J.

11.

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

Caldwell, John S.

12.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

13.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

14.

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

15.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

16.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

17.

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

18.

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

Reagan, Ronald

19.

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

Reston, James

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Durant, William J.

23.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

24.

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.

25.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

26.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Dulles, John Foster

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.

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.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

35.

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

36.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

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

Kempton, Murray

38.

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

Themistocles

39.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

40.

The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

Welch, Robert

41.

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

Truman, Harry S

42.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

43.

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

Voltaire

44.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

45.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

46.

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

Marshalov, Boris

47.

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

48.

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

Douglas, William O.

49.

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

Russell, Bertrand

50.

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

Solon