Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

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

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

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

Russell, Bertrand

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

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

Hospers, John

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

10.

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

11.

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

Bertrand Russell

12.

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

13.

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

Friedman, Milton

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

H. L. Mencken

17.

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

Reagan, Ronald

18.

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

19.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

20.

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

Reagan, Ronald

21.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

22.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

23.

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

Baluch, Joy

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

29.

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

Voltaire

30.

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

Solon

31.

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

Gladstone, William E.

32.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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.

36.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

37.

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

38.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

39.

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

Reston, James

40.

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

41.

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

42.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

43.

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

Kempton, Murray

44.

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

45.

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

Bunting, Basil

46.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

50.

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