Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

Voltaire

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

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

Crockett, Davy

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

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

Bertrand Russell

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

Voltaire

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

Einstein, Albert

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

Burns, George

10.

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

Herbert, A. P.

11.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

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.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

18.

Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.

Kocher, Gerhard

19.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

20.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

21.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

22.

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

23.

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

George W. Bush

24.

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

Kempton, Murray

25.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

26.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman, Milton

27.

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.

28.

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

Russell, Bertrand

29.

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

Marshalov, Boris

30.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

Locke, John

31.

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

32.

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

Baxter, Beverley

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.

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

35.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

36.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

37.

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

38.

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

Pittacus

39.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

40.

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

Baluch, Joy

41.

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

42.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

43.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

44.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

45.

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

Caldwell, John S.

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.

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

Bob Wells

48.

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

Hospers, John

49.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

50.

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