Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

Best Quotes about Government

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

Rostand, Jean

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

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

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

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

Hospers, John

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

Voltaire

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

10.

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

Pittacus

11.

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

12.

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

Friedman, Milton

13.

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

Lawson, Nigel

14.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

15.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

16.

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

Melbourne, Lord

17.

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

18.

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

Russell, Bertrand

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

22.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

23.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

24.

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

25.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

26.

Being nice to governments doesn't work, they are such lying bastards.

Baluch, Joy

27.

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

Wallis, W. Allen

28.

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

29.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

33.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

34.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

35.

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

Kempton, Murray

36.

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

H. L. Mencken

37.

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

38.

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

39.

In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?

Proverb, French

40.

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

Richard M. Nixon

41.

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

Friedman, Milton

42.

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