Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Wotton, Sir Henry

Best Quotes about 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

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.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

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

Cousin, Victor

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

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Jefferson, Thomas

The greater the hold of government upon the life of the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war.

Hospers, John

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

10.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

11.

Of the best rulers, The people only know that they exist; the next best they love and praise the next they fear; and the next they revile. When they do not command the people's faith, some will lose faith in them, and then they resort to oaths! But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done, the people all remark, We have done it ourselves.

Lao-Tzu

12.

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

Welch, Robert

13.

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

14.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

15.

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

Durant, William J.

16.

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

Pittacus

17.

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

Kempton, Murray

18.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

19.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

20.

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

Reagan, Ronald

21.

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

22.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Updike, John

23.

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

Voltaire

24.

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

Bertrand Russell

25.

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

Themistocles

26.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

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

Dulles, John Foster

28.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

29.

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

30.

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

H. L. Mencken

31.

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

Rostand, Jean

32.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

33.

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

Melbourne, Lord

34.

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

35.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

36.

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

37.

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

Voltaire

38.

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

39.

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

Fred Thompson

40.

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

Solon

41.

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

42.

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

George W. Bush

43.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Baluch, Joy

48.

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

49.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

50.

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