Motivational Quotes

Government

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

- Nepos, Cornelius

Best Quotes about Government

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Caldwell, John S.

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

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

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

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

Reston, James

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Voltaire

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

10.

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

11.

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

Updike, John

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Gardner, John W.

15.

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

16.

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

Voltaire

17.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

18.

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

Lawson, Nigel

19.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

20.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Dulles, John Foster

28.

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

29.

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

George W. Bush

30.

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

Russell, Bertrand

31.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

32.

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

Reagan, Ronald

33.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

35.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

36.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

37.

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

38.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

39.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

40.

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

Hume, David

41.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

42.

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

Welch, Robert

43.

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

Themistocles

44.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

45.

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

Bertrand Russell

46.

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

47.

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

Pittacus

48.

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

49.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

50.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques