Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Updike, John

Best Quotes about Government

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

Marshalov, Boris

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain.

Herbert, A. P.

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

Friedman, Milton

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

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

10.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

11.

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

Caldwell, John S.

12.

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

Russell, Bertrand

13.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

14.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Douglas, William O.

18.

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

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

22.

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

Bob Wells

23.

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

Friedman, Milton

24.

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

Crockett, Davy

25.

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

H. L. Mencken

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

28.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

29.

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.

30.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

31.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

32.

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

33.

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

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.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

36.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

37.

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

Durant, William J.

38.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

39.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

40.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

41.

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

Richard M. Nixon

42.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

43.

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

44.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

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.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

47.

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

Burns, George

48.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

49.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

50.

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