Motivational Quotes

Government

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

- Cousin, Victor

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

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Fred Thompson

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

10.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

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.

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

13.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

14.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

15.

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

16.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

Gardner, John W.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Solon

20.

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

Lawson, Nigel

21.

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.

22.

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

Crockett, Davy

23.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

24.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

25.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

26.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

27.

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

28.

That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.

Pittacus

29.

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

30.

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

Baluch, Joy

31.

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

Durant, William J.

32.

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

33.

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

Kempton, Murray

34.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

35.

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

Jackson, Andrew

36.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

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

40.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

41.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

42.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Jefferson, Thomas

43.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

44.

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.

45.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

46.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

47.

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

Themistocles

48.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

49.

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

50.

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

Richard M. Nixon