Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Updike, John

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Bastiat, Frederic

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

Burns, George

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

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

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

Jefferson, Thomas

10.

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

Themistocles

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Dulles, John Foster

14.

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

Marshalov, Boris

15.

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

16.

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

Einstein, Albert

17.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

18.

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

Solon

19.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

20.

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

Lawson, Nigel

21.

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

Reston, James

22.

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

Crockett, Davy

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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.

26.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Gladstone, William E.

30.

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

31.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

32.

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

Gardner, John W.

33.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

34.

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

Truman, Harry S

35.

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

36.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

37.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

38.

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

Durant, William J.

39.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

40.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

41.

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

42.

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

Jackson, Andrew

43.

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

Richard M. Nixon

44.

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

45.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

49.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

50.

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