Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bonaparte, Napoleon

Best Quotes about Government

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

Rostand, Jean

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

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

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

Herbert, A. P.

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

Crockett, Davy

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

Kempton, Murray

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Russell, Bertrand

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

10.

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

Einstein, Albert

11.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

Locke, John

12.

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

Welch, Robert

13.

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

Voltaire

14.

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

15.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

16.

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

Fred Thompson

17.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

18.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

19.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Franklin, Benjamin

20.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

21.

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

Solon

22.

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

Truman, Harry S

23.

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign. That is the essence of the problem.

Mirabeau, Comte De

24.

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright

25.

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

Gardner, John W.

26.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

27.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

28.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

29.

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

30.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

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

Bertrand Russell

32.

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

George W. Bush

33.

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Roosevelt, Theodore

34.

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

Caldwell, John S.

35.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

36.

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.

37.

The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

38.

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

Hospers, John

39.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

40.

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

41.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

42.

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

Updike, John

43.

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

Murray, Bill

44.

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