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

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

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

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

Cousin, Victor

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

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

10.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

11.

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

12.

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

Bob Wells

13.

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

14.

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

Friedman, Milton

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

20.

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

21.

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

George W. Bush

22.

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

Reagan, Ronald

23.

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.

24.

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

Fred Thompson

25.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

26.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

27.

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

28.

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

H. L. Mencken

29.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

30.

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

Proverb, French

31.

The Athenians govern the Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife, govern me; your son governs you.

Themistocles

32.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Hospers, John

39.

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

Marshalov, Boris

40.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Jackson, Andrew

44.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

45.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

46.

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

Gardner, John W.

47.

The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.

Beecher, Henry Ward

48.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

49.

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

50.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson