Motivational Quotes

Government

If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to -- and you will -- leave, and be something else.

- Noonan, Peggy

Best Quotes about Government

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

Hume, David

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

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

Lawson, Nigel

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Gardner, John W.

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

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

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

Russell, Bertrand

10.

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

Bastiat, Frederic

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

14.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

15.

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

Marshalov, Boris

16.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

17.

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

Hospers, John

18.

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

19.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

20.

No government is safe unless fortified by goodwill.

Nepos, Cornelius

21.

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

22.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

23.

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

Wotton, Sir Henry

24.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Voltaire

28.

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.

29.

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

Durant, William J.

30.

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

31.

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

Themistocles

32.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

33.

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

Bob Wells

34.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

35.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Mencken, H. L.

36.

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

Voltaire

37.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

38.

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

39.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

40.

Public instruction should be the first object of government.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

41.

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

Updike, John

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

George W. Bush

45.

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

Truman, Harry S

46.

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

Crockett, Davy

47.

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