Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Lawson, Nigel

Best Quotes about Government

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Bob Wells

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

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

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

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

Shaw, George Bernard

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

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

Reagan, Ronald

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

Welch, Robert

10.

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

11.

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

Pittacus

12.

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

Baxter, Beverley

13.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

14.

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

Friedman, Milton

15.

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

Lawson, Nigel

16.

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

17.

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

18.

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

19.

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

Friedman, Milton

20.

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

Updike, John

21.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

22.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

23.

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Roosevelt, Theodore

24.

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

25.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

26.

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

27.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

28.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

29.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

33.

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.

Cousin, Victor

34.

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

Richard M. Nixon

35.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

36.

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

37.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

38.

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

39.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

40.

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

41.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

42.

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

Gardner, John W.

43.

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

44.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

45.

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

Reston, James

46.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Balzac, Honore De

47.

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Updike, John

48.

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

49.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Lapham, Lewis H.

50.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Franklin, Benjamin