Motivational Quotes

Government

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

- Kennedy, John F.

Best Quotes about Government

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

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Crockett, Davy

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Wallis, W. Allen

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

George W. Bush

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

Gardner, John W.

10.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

11.

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

12.

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

Herbert, A. P.

13.

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

Richard M. Nixon

14.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

15.

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

Gladstone, William E.

16.

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

17.

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

Burns, George

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

22.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

23.

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

24.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

26.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

27.

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

28.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

29.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

30.

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

Marshalov, Boris

31.

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

Douglas, William O.

32.

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

33.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

34.

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

Kempton, Murray

35.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

36.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

37.

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

Baxter, Beverley

38.

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

39.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

40.

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

41.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Melbourne, Lord

42.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Hamilton, Alexander

43.

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

H. L. Mencken

44.

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.

45.

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

Pittacus

46.

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

47.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

48.

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