Motivational Quotes

Government

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

Dulles, John Foster

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

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

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

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

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

10.

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

Solon

11.

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

Hospers, John

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

15.

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

16.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

17.

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

18.

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

Reston, James

19.

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

Reagan, Ronald

20.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

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

Crockett, Davy

22.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

23.

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

24.

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

Reagan, Ronald

25.

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

Douglas, William O.

26.

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

27.

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

Friedman, Milton

28.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

29.

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

Rostand, Jean

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

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.

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

Reston, James

35.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

36.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

37.

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Sir Winston Churchill

38.

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

39.

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

Baxter, Beverley

40.

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

Burns, George

41.

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

Marshalov, Boris

42.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

43.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

44.

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

45.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

46.

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

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.

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

49.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

50.

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

Kocher, Gerhard