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

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

Reston, James

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

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

George W. Bush

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

H. L. Mencken

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

Russell, Bertrand

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

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

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

Hume, David

10.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

11.

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

12.

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

Murray, Bill

13.

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

Dulles, John Foster

14.

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

Hospers, John

15.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

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

17.

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

Solon

18.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

19.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

20.

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

Einstein, Albert

21.

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

22.

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

Durant, William J.

23.

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

Bunting, Basil

24.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

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.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

27.

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

28.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

29.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

30.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

31.

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.

32.

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

Marshalov, Boris

33.

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

34.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

35.

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

Bertrand Russell

36.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

43.

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

Voltaire

44.

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

45.

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

Burns, George

46.

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

Reagan, Ronald

47.

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

Tuchman, Barbara

48.

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

Caldwell, John S.

49.

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

Rostand, Jean

50.

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