Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bonaparte, Napoleon

Best Quotes about Government

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

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

Updike, John

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

Limbaugh, Rush

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

10.

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

Baluch, Joy

11.

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

12.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

13.

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

Friedman, Milton

14.

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

15.

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

Richard M. Nixon

16.

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

17.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

19.

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

Burns, George

20.

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

Reston, James

21.

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

Hume, David

22.

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

Bertrand Russell

23.

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

Crockett, Davy

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Durant, William J.

27.

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

Reston, James

28.

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

Welch, Robert

29.

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

30.

To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

Lawson, Nigel

31.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

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 best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

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

Hospers, John

35.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

41.

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

Dulles, John Foster

42.

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

43.

But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.

Bunting, Basil

44.

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

45.

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

Updike, John

46.

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

H. L. Mencken

47.

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

48.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

49.

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

Fred Thompson

50.

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

Herbert, A. P.