Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

Shaw, George Bernard

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

H. L. Mencken

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

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

Baluch, Joy

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

10.

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.

11.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

12.

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

13.

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

Richard M. Nixon

14.

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

15.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

16.

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

Bertrand Russell

17.

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

Bunting, Basil

18.

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

19.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

20.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

21.

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

Reagan, Ronald

22.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

23.

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

Durant, William J.

24.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

25.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

26.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

27.

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

28.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

29.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Friedman, Milton

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Reston, James

36.

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.

37.

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

Cousin, Victor

38.

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

Marshalov, Boris

39.

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

Voltaire

40.

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

Solon

41.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

42.

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

43.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

44.

The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations. But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

45.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

46.

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

Einstein, Albert

47.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

48.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

49.

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

50.

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

Dulles, John Foster