Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Russell, Bertrand

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Reston, James

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.

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

10.

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

Dulles, John Foster

11.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

12.

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

Fred Thompson

13.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

14.

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

15.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

16.

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

17.

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

18.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

19.

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

20.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

21.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

22.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

23.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

24.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

25.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

26.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

27.

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

28.

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

Tuchman, Barbara

29.

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

Hume, David

30.

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

31.

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

Reston, James

32.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

33.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

Shaw, George Bernard

34.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

35.

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

Lawson, Nigel

36.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

37.

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

Bertrand Russell

38.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

39.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

40.

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

Murray, Bill

41.

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

George W. Bush

42.

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

43.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Mencken, H. L.

44.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

45.

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

46.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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