Motivational Quotes

Government

We have the best government that money can buy.

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Government

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

Rostand, Jean

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

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Crossman, Richard

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

Voltaire

10.

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

11.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

12.

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

13.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

14.

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

15.

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

Bunting, Basil

16.

Our Congress is the finest body of men money can buy.

Amsterdam, Maury

17.

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

Baluch, Joy

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

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

Reagan, Ronald

22.

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

Bertrand Russell

23.

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

Russell, Bertrand

24.

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

Melbourne, Lord

25.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

26.

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

Themistocles

27.

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

Lawson, Nigel

28.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

33.

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

34.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

35.

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

Kempton, Murray

36.

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

Friedman, Milton

37.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

38.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

39.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

40.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

41.

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

George W. Bush

42.

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

43.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

44.

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

45.

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

Marshalov, Boris

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.

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

48.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

49.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

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