Motivational Quotes

Government

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

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

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

Kocher, Gerhard

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

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

Bertrand Russell

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Dulles, John Foster

10.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

11.

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

12.

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

13.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Updike, John

14.

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

15.

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

Hospers, John

16.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

17.

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

Caldwell, John S.

18.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

19.

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

Marshalov, Boris

20.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

Gardner, John W.

21.

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

22.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

23.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

24.

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

Burns, George

25.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

29.

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

30.

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

Kempton, Murray

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Updike, John

40.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

46.

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

47.

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

Solon

48.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

49.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

50.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.