Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

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

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Lippmann, Walter

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

Themistocles

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain.

Herbert, A. P.

10.

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

11.

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

Reagan, Ronald

12.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

13.

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

Melbourne, Lord

14.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

15.

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

16.

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

Rostand, Jean

17.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

18.

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

Crockett, Davy

19.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

20.

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.

21.

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

Richard M. Nixon

22.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

23.

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

24.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

25.

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

26.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

27.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

28.

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

29.

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

Updike, John

30.

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

Welch, Robert

31.

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

32.

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

33.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

34.

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

Baxter, Beverley

35.

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

Jackson, Andrew

36.

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, then everybody disagrees.

Marshalov, Boris

37.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

39.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

40.

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

Fred Thompson

41.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Russell, Bertrand

46.

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

George W. Bush

47.

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

48.

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

Pittacus

49.

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

Lawson, Nigel

50.

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.