Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Roosevelt, Theodore

Best Quotes about Government

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

Crockett, Davy

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

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

Solon

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

Kempton, Murray

10.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

11.

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

12.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

13.

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

Bertrand Russell

14.

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

15.

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

Marshalov, Boris

16.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Updike, John

17.

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

Reagan, Ronald

18.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

19.

It is doubtful that the government knows much more than the public does about how government [Economic] policies will work.

Wallis, W. Allen

20.

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

Reston, James

21.

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

22.

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

23.

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

24.

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

25.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

26.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Baluch, Joy

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

33.

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

34.

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

Pittacus

35.

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

36.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

37.

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.

38.

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

Updike, John

39.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

40.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

41.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

42.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

43.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

44.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

45.

The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

Welch, Robert

46.

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

47.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

48.

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

49.

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

Richard M. Nixon

50.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward