Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Proverb, French

Best Quotes about Government

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

Shaw, George Bernard

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

Voltaire

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

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

Russell, Bertrand

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

10.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

11.

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

Friedman, Milton

12.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

13.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

14.

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.

15.

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

Bob Wells

16.

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

17.

Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.

Baluch, Joy

18.

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

Durant, William J.

19.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

20.

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

21.

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

Solon

22.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

23.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Reagan, Ronald

27.

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

Reagan, Ronald

28.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

29.

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

Burns, George

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

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

Marshalov, Boris

34.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

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

Dulles, John Foster

36.

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

Reston, James

37.

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

Murray, Bill

38.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

39.

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

40.

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

Gardner, John W.

41.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

42.

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

Pittacus

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

48.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

49.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

50.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.