Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Government

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

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

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.

Durant, William J.

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

Fred Thompson

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

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

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

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

10.

Generosity is a part of my character, and I therefore hasten to assure this Government that I will never make an allegation of dishonesty against it wherever a simple explanation of stupidity will suffice.

Lever, Leslie Baron

11.

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

12.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

13.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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.

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

16.

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

Hume, David

17.

That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.

Pittacus

18.

Any government is potentially the worst client in the world you could ever possibly want to have.

Thomas Heatherwick

19.

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

Einstein, Albert

20.

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

Limbaugh, Rush

21.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

22.

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

23.

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

Baxter, Beverley

24.

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

Voltaire

25.

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

26.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

27.

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

Voltaire

28.

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

Russell, Bertrand

29.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

30.

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

Marshalov, Boris

31.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

32.

The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

Welch, Robert

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

36.

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

37.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

38.

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

Dulles, John Foster

39.

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.

40.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

41.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

42.

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

43.

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

Themistocles

44.

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

Bunting, Basil

45.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

46.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

47.

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

Lawson, Nigel

48.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

49.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.