Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Richard M. Nixon

Best Quotes about Government

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

Durant, William J.

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

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

For its part, Government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways -- to the voices of quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices, and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Nixon, Richard M.

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

Russell, Bertrand

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

Marshalov, Boris

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

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

Burns, George

10.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

11.

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

12.

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

Voltaire

13.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

14.

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

15.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

16.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

20.

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

Themistocles

21.

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

Hospers, John

22.

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

Dulles, John Foster

23.

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

Richard M. Nixon

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.

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

26.

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

Einstein, Albert

27.

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

Fred Thompson

28.

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

Friedman, Milton

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

Gardner, John W.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

34.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

35.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

36.

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

37.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

38.

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

39.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

40.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Madison, James

41.

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

42.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

43.

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

44.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Franklin, Benjamin

45.

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

Updike, John

46.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

47.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

48.

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