Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Boytzwnburg, Count

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

Welch, Robert

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

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

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

Reston, James

10.

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

Hume, David

11.

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

Proverb, French

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

15.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

16.

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

Gladstone, William E.

17.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

18.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

19.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

20.

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

Tuchman, Barbara

21.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

22.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

23.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

24.

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

Updike, John

25.

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

26.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

27.

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

Marshalov, Boris

28.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

29.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

30.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

31.

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

George W. Bush

32.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

33.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

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.

35.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

36.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

37.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Einstein, Albert

43.

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

44.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

45.

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

H. L. Mencken

46.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

47.

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

Baxter, Beverley

48.

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

Hospers, John

49.

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

Truman, Harry S

50.

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