Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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.

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

Burns, George

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

Voltaire

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

Voltaire

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

Reston, James

12.

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

Herbert, A. P.

13.

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

14.

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

Pittacus

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

18.

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

Baxter, Beverley

19.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

20.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

21.

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

Hume, David

22.

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

Gladstone, William E.

23.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

24.

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

25.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

26.

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

Douglas, William O.

27.

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

Russell, Bertrand

28.

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

Solon

29.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

30.

To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

Lawson, Nigel

31.

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

Gardner, John W.

32.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

33.

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

34.

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

Reston, James

35.

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

36.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

37.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

38.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Updike, John

42.

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

43.

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

Fred Thompson

44.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

45.

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

46.

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

Melbourne, Lord

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

50.

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