Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- George W. Bush

Best Quotes about Government

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

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

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.

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

Melbourne, Lord

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright

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

Kempton, Murray

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

Marshalov, Boris

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

H. L. Mencken

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

10.

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

Bunting, Basil

11.

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

Voltaire

12.

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

13.

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

Reagan, Ronald

14.

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

Rostand, Jean

15.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

16.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

17.

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

Einstein, Albert

18.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

19.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

20.

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

Reston, James

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.

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

23.

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.

24.

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

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.

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

27.

In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?

Proverb, French

28.

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

Baxter, Beverley

29.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Friedman, Milton

30.

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

Voltaire

31.

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

32.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

33.

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

Douglas, William O.

34.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

35.

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

Welch, Robert

36.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

37.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

38.

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

39.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

44.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

45.

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

46.

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

Baluch, Joy

47.

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

48.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

49.

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

Burns, George

50.

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Updike, John