Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Wotton, Sir Henry

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

Rostand, Jean

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

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

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

Bunting, Basil

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Fred Thompson

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

Bastiat, Frederic

10.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

11.

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

12.

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

George W. Bush

13.

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

Lawson, Nigel

14.

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

Amsterdam, Maury

15.

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

16.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

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

18.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

19.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

20.

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

Durant, William J.

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

25.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

26.

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

27.

What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government.

President Barack Obama

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

Dulles, John Foster

31.

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

32.

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

Updike, John

33.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

34.

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

Baxter, Beverley

35.

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

Douglas, William O.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

39.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

40.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

41.

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.

42.

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

43.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

44.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

46.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

47.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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