Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bunting, Basil

Best Quotes about Government

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

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.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

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

George W. Bush

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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

Bertrand Russell

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

10.

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

11.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

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 is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

14.

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.

15.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

20.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

21.

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

22.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

23.

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

Hume, David

24.

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

25.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

26.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

27.

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

28.

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

Richard M. Nixon

29.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Madison, James

31.

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

Rostand, Jean

32.

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

33.

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

Baxter, Beverley

34.

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

35.

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

H. L. Mencken

36.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

37.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

38.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

42.

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

Kempton, Murray

43.

The Athenians govern the Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife, govern me; your son governs you.

Themistocles

44.

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

Solon

45.

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

Durant, William J.

46.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

47.

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

Shaw, George Bernard

48.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

49.

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

50.

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

Voltaire