Motivational Quotes

Government

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

- Ford, Gerald R.

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

Baxter, Beverley

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.

Baudrillard, Jean

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

Bob Wells

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

Baluch, Joy

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Franklin, Benjamin

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

10.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

11.

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

John Kenneth Galbraith

12.

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

Bunting, Basil

13.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

14.

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

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.

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

Murray, Bill

17.

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

18.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

19.

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

Gladstone, William E.

20.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

21.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

22.

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

23.

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

24.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

25.

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

26.

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

Pittacus

27.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

28.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

29.

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

30.

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

31.

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

Reston, James

32.

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

33.

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

Fred Thompson

34.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

35.

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

H. L. Mencken

36.

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.

37.

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

Crockett, Davy

38.

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

39.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

40.

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

Lawson, Nigel

41.

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

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.

You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

George W. Bush

44.

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

45.

The point to remember is what government gives it must first take away

Caldwell, John S.

46.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

47.

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

48.

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

Melbourne, Lord

49.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

50.

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

Dulles, John Foster