Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

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

Einstein, Albert

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

Pittacus

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

Durant, William J.

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

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Douglas, William O.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

10.

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

11.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

12.

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

13.

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

Voltaire

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

19.

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

Kempton, Murray

20.

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

21.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

22.

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

23.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

24.

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

Solon

25.

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

H. L. Mencken

26.

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

27.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

36.

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

37.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

38.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

39.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

40.

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

Bunting, Basil

41.

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

Themistocles

42.

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

Fred Thompson

43.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

44.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

45.

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

Bertrand Russell

46.

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

Murray, Bill

47.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

48.

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

49.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

50.

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

Baxter, Beverley