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

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

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

Bunting, Basil

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

Einstein, Albert

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

Bertrand Russell

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

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

Baxter, Beverley

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

Welch, Robert

10.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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.

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

Updike, John

13.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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.

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

16.

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

Solon

17.

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

Proverb, French

18.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

19.

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

20.

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

Fred Thompson

21.

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

Cousin, Victor

22.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

23.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

24.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Voltaire

25.

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

Jackson, Andrew

26.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

27.

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

Friedman, Milton

28.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

29.

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

Crockett, Davy

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Reagan, Ronald

33.

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

34.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

35.

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

36.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

37.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

38.

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

39.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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.

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.

42.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

43.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

44.

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

Bob Wells

45.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

46.

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

47.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

48.

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

49.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

50.

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