Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Hume, David

Best Quotes about Government

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

Hume, David

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

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

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

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

Richard M. Nixon

10.

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

Baxter, Beverley

11.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

12.

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

Updike, John

13.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

14.

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

15.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

16.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

18.

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

Melbourne, Lord

19.

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

20.

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

George W. Bush

21.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

22.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

23.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

24.

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

25.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

26.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

27.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

28.

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

29.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Durant, William J.

34.

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

Reston, James

35.

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Sir Winston Churchill

36.

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

37.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

38.

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

Caldwell, John S.

39.

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

40.

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

H. L. Mencken

41.

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

Einstein, Albert

42.

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

Voltaire

43.

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

44.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Fred Thompson

49.

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

Baluch, Joy

50.

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