Motivational Quotes

Government

Generosity is a part of my character, and I therefore hasten to assure this Government that I will never make an allegation of dishonesty against it wherever a simple explanation of stupidity will suffice.

- Lever, Leslie Baron

Best Quotes about Government

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

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

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

Bertrand Russell

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

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

Marshalov, Boris

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

Bob Wells

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

Hume, David

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

Reagan, Ronald

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

10.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

11.

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

12.

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

13.

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

Dulles, John Foster

14.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

15.

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

Reston, James

16.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

17.

The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

Welch, Robert

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Burns, George

25.

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

26.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

27.

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

28.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

29.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

30.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

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

32.

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

Rostand, Jean

33.

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

H. L. Mencken

34.

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

Einstein, Albert

35.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

36.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life -- this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

O'Rourke, P. J.

37.

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

Updike, John

38.

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

Lawson, Nigel

39.

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

Proverb, French

40.

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

Reston, James

41.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

42.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

43.

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

Murray, Bill

44.

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

Gardner, John W.

45.

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

Reagan, Ronald

46.

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

Voltaire

47.

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

Richard M. Nixon

48.

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

49.

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

George W. Bush

50.

The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.

Sade, Marquis De