Motivational Quotes

Government

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

Best Quotes about Government

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

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

Voltaire

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

Herbert, A. P.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

You could afford your house without the government if it weren't for the government.

Limbaugh, Rush

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

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

Solon

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

10.

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

Baxter, Beverley

11.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Updike, John

16.

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

Marshalov, Boris

17.

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

18.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

19.

Government can be bigger than any of the players on the field as a referee, but it has no right to become one of the players.

Igleheart, Austin

20.

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

21.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

22.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Hospers, John

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.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

Thoreau, Henry David

32.

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

Reston, James

33.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

34.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

35.

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

Bob Wells

36.

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

37.

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

Richard M. Nixon

38.

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

39.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

40.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

41.

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

42.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

43.

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

Melbourne, Lord

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Jackson, Andrew

47.

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

Einstein, Albert

48.

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.

49.

In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?

Proverb, French

50.

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.