Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Pittacus

Best Quotes about Government

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

Solon

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

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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

Voltaire

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

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

Bob Wells

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

10.

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

George W. Bush

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.

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

Burns, George

13.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

14.

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

Dulles, John Foster

15.

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

16.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

17.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

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

Lawson, Nigel

19.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

20.

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

21.

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

Proverb, French

22.

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

23.

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray

24.

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

25.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

26.

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

Truman, Harry S

27.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

28.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

29.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

30.

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

Rostand, Jean

31.

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

Hume, David

32.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

33.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

34.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

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

39.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

40.

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

41.

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

42.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

48.

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

Bunting, Basil

49.

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

Reston, James

50.

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