Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Einstein, Albert

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

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

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

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

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

Cousin, Victor

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

Reston, James

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

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

Murray, Bill

11.

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

Themistocles

12.

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

Reagan, Ronald

13.

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

Caldwell, John S.

14.

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

Voltaire

15.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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

Truman, Harry S

19.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

20.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

21.

Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain.

Herbert, A. P.

22.

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

Updike, John

23.

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

24.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

25.

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

26.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Johnson, Samuel

27.

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

28.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

29.

Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.

Baxter, Beverley

30.

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

Reston, James

31.

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

Jackson, Andrew

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Hospers, John

36.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

37.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

38.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

39.

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

Reagan, Ronald

40.

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

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.

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

Bunting, Basil

43.

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

44.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

45.

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

Dulles, John Foster

46.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

47.

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

48.

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

Proverb, French

49.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

50.

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

Richard M. Nixon