Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Gladstone, William E.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

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

H. L. Mencken

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

Bunting, Basil

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

Gardner, John W.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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.

10.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

14.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

15.

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

Burns, George

16.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Carlyle, Thomas

17.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

18.

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

19.

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

Solon

20.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

21.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

22.

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

23.

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

Truman, Harry S

24.

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

Baluch, Joy

25.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

26.

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

27.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Socrates

28.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

29.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

30.

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

Einstein, Albert

31.

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

32.

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

Reston, James

33.

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

Themistocles

34.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

35.

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

Hume, David

36.

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

37.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

38.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

39.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

40.

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

41.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

42.

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

Friedman, Milton

43.

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

44.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

45.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

46.

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

Crockett, Davy

47.

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.

48.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

49.

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

50.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius