Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

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

Reston, James

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

Bunting, Basil

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

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

10.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

11.

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

12.

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

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.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

15.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

16.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

17.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

18.

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

19.

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

Baxter, Beverley

20.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

21.

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

Bertrand Russell

22.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life -- this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

O'Rourke, P. J.

23.

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

Solon

24.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

26.

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

George W. Bush

27.

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

Rostand, Jean

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

31.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

32.

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

Reston, James

33.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Voltaire

37.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

38.

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

39.

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

Hume, David

40.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Friedman, Milton

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

44.

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

Herbert, A. P.

45.

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

46.

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

Reagan, Ronald

47.

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

48.

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

Richard M. Nixon

49.

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