Motivational Quotes

Government

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

- Murray, Bill

Best Quotes about Government

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

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.

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

Durant, William J.

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

Proverb, French

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.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

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

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Jefferson, Thomas

10.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

11.

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

Burns, George

12.

The point to remember is what government gives it must first take away

Caldwell, John S.

13.

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

Richard M. Nixon

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Gladstone, William E.

17.

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

18.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Harry S Truman

19.

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

Updike, John

20.

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

Reston, James

21.

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

Voltaire

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Ford, Gerald R.

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

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

Bob Wells

28.

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

Russell, Bertrand

29.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

30.

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

31.

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

Fred Thompson

32.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

33.

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

Bertrand Russell

34.

Safety of the state is the highest law.

Justinian

35.

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

36.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

37.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

38.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

39.

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

Marshalov, Boris

40.

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

Murray, Bill

41.

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

42.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

43.

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

Welch, Robert

44.

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

Crockett, Davy

45.

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