Motivational Quotes

Government

Office without pay makes thieves.

- Proverb, German

Best Quotes about Government

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

Durant, William J.

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

Macaulay, Thomas B.

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

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

Hospers, John

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

Douglas, William O.

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

Lawson, Nigel

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

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

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

10.

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

Alcott, Amos Bronson

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Voltaire

14.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

15.

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

Fred Thompson

16.

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

Reagan, Ronald

17.

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

Baluch, Joy

18.

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

19.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Roosevelt, Theodore

20.

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

21.

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

22.

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

23.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

24.

The auditor is a watchdog and not a bloodhound.

Topes, Lord Justice

25.

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

26.

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

27.

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

Friedman, Milton

28.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

29.

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

Crockett, Davy

30.

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

Thomas Heatherwick

31.

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

32.

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

Melbourne, Lord

33.

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

Marshalov, Boris

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Mirabeau, Comte De

37.

Fear is the foundation of most government.

Adams, John

38.

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

Voltaire

39.

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

Reston, James

40.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill, Winston

41.

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

42.

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

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.

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

Caldwell, John S.

45.

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

46.

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

Murray, Bill

47.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

Locke, John

48.

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

Boytzwnburg, Count

49.

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

50.

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