Motivational Quotes

Government

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

- Einstein, Albert

Best Quotes about Government

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

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

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

Bunting, Basil

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Voltaire

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

Themistocles

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Jefferson, Thomas

10.

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

11.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

15.

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

Russell, Bertrand

16.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

17.

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

18.

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

Welch, Robert

19.

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

20.

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

Proverb, French

21.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Burns, George

27.

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

Dulles, John Foster

28.

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

29.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

30.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Crockett, Davy

34.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

35.

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

Reagan, Ronald

36.

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

Melbourne, Lord

37.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

38.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

39.

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

Hume, David

40.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

44.

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

Hospers, John

45.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

46.

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.

47.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

48.

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

Pittacus

49.

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

50.

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