Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

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

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

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

Caldwell, John S.

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

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Sir Winston Churchill

10.

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

Richard M. Nixon

11.

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

Durant, William J.

12.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

13.

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

14.

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

15.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Roosevelt, Theodore

16.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

17.

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

Voltaire

18.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

19.

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

20.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Reagan, Ronald

21.

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

22.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

23.

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

Welch, Robert

24.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

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

Lawson, Nigel

28.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

29.

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

Proverb, French

30.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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.

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

33.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

35.

You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

George W. Bush

36.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

37.

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

38.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

39.

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

H. L. Mencken

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Fred Thompson

45.

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

46.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

47.

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

Baluch, Joy

48.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

49.

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