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

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

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

Burns, George

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

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

Gladstone, William E.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

10.

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

Jackson, Andrew

11.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Voltaire

15.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

16.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

17.

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray

18.

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

19.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

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.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

28.

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

29.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

30.

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

Bunting, Basil

31.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

32.

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

33.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

34.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

35.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

36.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

37.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

38.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

39.

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

Caldwell, John S.

40.

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

Hume, David

41.

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

42.

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

Einstein, Albert

43.

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

Baxter, Beverley

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Solon

47.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

48.

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

49.

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