Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Boytzwnburg, Count

Best Quotes about Government

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

Hospers, John

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

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

Pittacus

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

Caldwell, John S.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

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

Cousin, Victor

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

11.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

12.

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

13.

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

14.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

15.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

16.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

17.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

18.

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

19.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

20.

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.

21.

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

Truman, Harry S

22.

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.

23.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

24.

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

Marshalov, Boris

25.

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

Baluch, Joy

26.

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

Bob Wells

27.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

28.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Hume, David

29.

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

Melbourne, Lord

30.

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

Richard M. Nixon

31.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

32.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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 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

35.

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

Einstein, Albert

36.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Voltaire

40.

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

Solon

41.

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

Updike, John

42.

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

Baxter, Beverley

43.

Generosity is a part of my character, and I therefore hasten to assure this Government that I will never make an allegation of dishonesty against it wherever a simple explanation of stupidity will suffice.

Lever, Leslie Baron

44.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

45.

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

46.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

47.

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

Burns, George

48.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

49.

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

Proverb, French

50.

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