Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

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.

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

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

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

Bunting, Basil

Any government is potentially the worst client in the world you could ever possibly want to have.

Thomas Heatherwick

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Jefferson, Thomas

10.

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

11.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

12.

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

Bob Wells

13.

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

14.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

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

16.

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

17.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

18.

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

Friedman, Milton

19.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

20.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

21.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

22.

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

23.

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

Reston, James

24.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

25.

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

Russell, Bertrand

26.

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

Burns, George

27.

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

Updike, John

28.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

29.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

30.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

31.

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

Einstein, Albert

32.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

33.

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

Reston, James

34.

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

35.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

36.

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

Durant, William J.

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Cousin, Victor

40.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

41.

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

42.

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

George W. Bush

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

46.

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

47.

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

Marshalov, Boris

48.

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

Lawson, Nigel

49.

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

Solon

50.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.