Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Pittacus

Best Quotes about Government

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Amsterdam, Maury

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

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.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

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

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

10.

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

11.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

12.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

13.

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

14.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

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

16.

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

Richard M. Nixon

17.

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

18.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

19.

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

20.

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

21.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

22.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

23.

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

Proverb, French

24.

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

25.

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

Crockett, Davy

26.

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

27.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

28.

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

Truman, Harry S

29.

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

30.

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

Marshalov, Boris

31.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

32.

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

Caldwell, John S.

33.

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

Voltaire

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Einstein, Albert

37.

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

Fred Thompson

38.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

39.

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

40.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

41.

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

Lawson, Nigel

42.

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

43.

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

Friedman, Milton

44.

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

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.

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

Cousin, Victor

47.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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