Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Beecher, Henry Ward

Best Quotes about Government

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

Truman, Harry S

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

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

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

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

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

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

10.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

11.

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

Russell, Bertrand

12.

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

Melbourne, Lord

13.

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

Updike, John

14.

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

Reston, James

15.

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

Jackson, Andrew

16.

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

17.

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

George W. Bush

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

21.

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

H. L. Mencken

22.

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

23.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

24.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

25.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

26.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

27.

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

Fred Thompson

28.

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

Baluch, Joy

29.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

30.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

31.

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

32.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

33.

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Sir Winston Churchill

34.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

35.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Rostand, Jean

39.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

40.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

41.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

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

43.

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

Gladstone, William E.

44.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

45.

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

46.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

47.

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.

48.

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

Bob Wells

49.

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

50.

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

Reagan, Ronald