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

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Solon

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

Gladstone, William E.

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

Murray, Bill

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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

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

Reston, James

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.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

12.

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.

13.

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

Updike, John

14.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

15.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

16.

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

Friedman, Milton

17.

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

Crockett, Davy

18.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

19.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Voltaire

20.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

21.

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

22.

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

Bertrand Russell

23.

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

24.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

Locke, John

25.

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

Welch, Robert

26.

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

27.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

28.

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

Pittacus

29.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

30.

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

Reagan, Ronald

31.

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

Richard M. Nixon

32.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

33.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

34.

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

Reston, James

35.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

36.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

37.

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

38.

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

Voltaire

39.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

40.

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

Kempton, Murray

41.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

42.

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

43.

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

Reagan, Ronald

44.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

45.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

46.

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

47.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

48.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

49.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

50.

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