Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Best Quotes about Government

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

Jackson, Andrew

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

Solon

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

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

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

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

Reston, James

10.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

11.

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

Crockett, Davy

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Burns, George

15.

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

Gladstone, William E.

16.

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

Hume, David

17.

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

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

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

20.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

21.

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

Fred Thompson

22.

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

Proverb, French

23.

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

Baxter, Beverley

24.

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

25.

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

Reagan, Ronald

26.

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

27.

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

Updike, John

28.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

29.

Government can be bigger than any of the players on the field as a referee, but it has no right to become one of the players.

Igleheart, Austin

30.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

31.

In our consumer confidence surveys, we ask people whether they think government economic policy is good, fair, or poor. Increasingly, the answer we get is just plain laughter.

Schmiedeskamp, Jay

32.

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

33.

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

Friedman, Milton

34.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Hospers, John

44.

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

Rostand, Jean

45.

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

Douglas, William O.

46.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

47.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

48.

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

Bertrand Russell

49.

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

50.

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