Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Dulles, John Foster

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Richard M. Nixon

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

Dulles, John Foster

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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.

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

11.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

12.

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

Updike, John

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Pittacus

16.

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

17.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

18.

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

19.

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

Baxter, Beverley

20.

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

Reston, James

21.

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

Hume, David

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.

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

24.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

25.

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

Murray, Bill

26.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Melbourne, Lord

28.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

29.

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

30.

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

Burns, George

31.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

32.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

33.

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

34.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

42.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

43.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

44.

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

Proverb, French

45.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

46.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

47.

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