Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Wotton, Sir Henry

Best Quotes about Government

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Murray, Bill

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

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

Bob Wells

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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

Rostand, Jean

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

Updike, John

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

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

10.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

11.

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

Updike, John

12.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

13.

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

14.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

15.

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

16.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

17.

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

Baxter, Beverley

18.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

19.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

20.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

21.

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

Burns, George

22.

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

Einstein, Albert

23.

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

Gladstone, William E.

24.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

25.

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

26.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

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

Themistocles

32.

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

33.

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

Dulles, John Foster

34.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

35.

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

36.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

37.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

38.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

39.

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

40.

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

Crockett, Davy

41.

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

Welch, Robert

42.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

43.

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

Voltaire

44.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

49.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

50.

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