Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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.

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

Dulles, John Foster

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

Gladstone, William E.

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

George W. Bush

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

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

Themistocles

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

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

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

Reston, James

10.

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

Fred Thompson

11.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

12.

What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government.

President Barack Obama

13.

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

Truman, Harry S

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.

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

16.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

17.

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

Marshalov, Boris

18.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

19.

Any government is potentially the worst client in the world you could ever possibly want to have.

Thomas Heatherwick

20.

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Friedman, Milton

24.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

26.

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

Gardner, John W.

27.

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

28.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

29.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

31.

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

32.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

33.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

34.

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

Welch, Robert

35.

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

Douglas, William O.

36.

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

Updike, John

37.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

38.

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

Baxter, Beverley

39.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

40.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

41.

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

42.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

43.

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

44.

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

Lawson, Nigel

45.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

46.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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

Proverb, French