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

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Einstein, Albert

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the government that he is like the town tart who finally married the Mayor.

Baxter, Beverley

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

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

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

Herbert, A. P.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

10.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

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.

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

13.

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.

14.

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

Voltaire

15.

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

16.

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

Burns, George

17.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

18.

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

Solon

19.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

20.

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

Gladstone, William E.

21.

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

Themistocles

22.

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

23.

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

H. L. Mencken

24.

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

Reston, James

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

29.

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

Reagan, Ronald

30.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Crockett, Davy

34.

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

Pittacus

35.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Melbourne, Lord

36.

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

Updike, John

37.

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

38.

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

Bunting, Basil

39.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

40.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

41.

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

Hume, David

42.

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

43.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

48.

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

49.

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

Russell, Bertrand

50.

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

Jackson, Andrew