Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Bunting, Basil

Best Quotes about Government

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

Proverb, French

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

Updike, John

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

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

Voltaire

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Bunting, Basil

10.

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

11.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

12.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

13.

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

Friedman, Milton

14.

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

Truman, Harry S

15.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

16.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

17.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

18.

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

George W. Bush

19.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

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

23.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

24.

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

25.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

26.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

27.

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

28.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

29.

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

Solon

30.

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.

Baudrillard, Jean

31.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

35.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

36.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

37.

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

Dulles, John Foster

38.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

39.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

40.

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

Hume, David

41.

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

Hospers, John

42.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

43.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Lippmann, Walter

44.

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

45.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

46.

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

47.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

48.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

49.

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

Rostand, Jean

50.

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.