Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Lawson, Nigel

Best Quotes about 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

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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

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

Bunting, Basil

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

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Updike, John

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

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

10.

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

Douglas, William O.

11.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

12.

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

Murray, Bill

13.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

14.

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

Caldwell, John S.

15.

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

Friedman, Milton

16.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

20.

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

Reston, James

21.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

22.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

23.

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

Fred Thompson

24.

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

Solon

25.

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

Hospers, John

26.

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

27.

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

28.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

29.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

Locke, John

31.

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

32.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

33.

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

34.

That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.

Pittacus

35.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

36.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

37.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

38.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

39.

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

40.

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

Voltaire

41.

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

42.

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

Lawson, Nigel

43.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

44.

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

45.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

46.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

Gardner, John W.

47.

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

Dulles, John Foster

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Rostand, Jean