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

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

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

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

Wallis, W. Allen

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

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.

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

Melbourne, Lord

15.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

16.

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

17.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

18.

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

Truman, Harry S

19.

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

20.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

21.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

22.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Madison, James

25.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

26.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

27.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

28.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

29.

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

30.

Sade, Marquis De

31.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

32.

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

Caldwell, John S.

33.

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

Richard M. Nixon

34.

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

35.

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

Hume, David

36.

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

Baxter, Beverley

37.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

38.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

39.

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

40.

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

Reagan, Ronald

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Crockett, Davy

44.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

45.

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

46.

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign. That is the essence of the problem.

Mirabeau, Comte De

47.

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

48.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

49.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

50.

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