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

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Friedman, Milton

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

Baxter, Beverley

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

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

Reston, James

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

Gladstone, William E.

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

Crockett, Davy

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

Solon

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

Einstein, Albert

10.

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

Truman, Harry S

11.

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

12.

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

Bunting, Basil

13.

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

Welch, Robert

14.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

15.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

16.

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

Cousin, Victor

17.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

18.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

19.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

20.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

21.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

22.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

23.

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

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.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

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.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Richard M. Nixon

31.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

32.

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

33.

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

Pittacus

34.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

35.

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

Baluch, Joy

36.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

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.

38.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

39.

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

40.

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

Voltaire

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.

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Hume, David

49.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

50.

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