Rule Quotes

Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one.

~ Thomas Paine

Government is not reason it is not eloquence - it is force.

~ George Washington

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

~ Honoré De Balzac

Whenever by an unfortunate occurrence of circumstances an opposition is compelled to support the government the support should be given with a kick and not a caress and should be withdrawn at the first available moment.

~ Randolph Churchill

To govern is to choose.

~ Pierre Mendes-France

For a country to have a great writer is to have another government.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Republics are brought to their ends by luxury monarchies by poverty.

~ Baron De Montesquieu

The foremost art of kings is the power to endure hatred.

~ Seneca

China has no income tax no unemployed and not a single soldier outside its own territory.

~ Chou En-Lai

In the long run every government is the exact symbol of its people with their wisdom and unwisdom.

~ Thomas Carlyle

The art of governing consists in not letting men grow old in their jobs.

~ Napoléon Bonaparte

The worst thing in this world next to anarchy is government.

~ Henry Ward Beecher

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot so well do for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.

~ Abraham Lincoln

That government is best which governs the least because its people discipline themselves.

~ Thomas Jefferson

How can you govern a country with two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?

~ Charles De Gaulle

There is but one way for a president to deal with the Congress and that is continuously incessantly and without interruption. If it's really going to work the relationship between the president and the Congress has got to be almost incestuous.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

~ Henry Kissinger

The average man that I encounter all over the country regards government as a sort of great milk cow with its head in the clouds eating air and growing a full teat for everybody on earth.

~ Clarence C. Manion

To make certain that crime does not pay the government should take it over and try to run it.

~ G. Norman Collie

The strongest pressure in the world can be friendly pressure.

~ Lester Pearson

The art of putting the right men in the right places is first in the science of government but that of finding places for the discontented is the most difficult.

~ Talleyrand

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails admit it frankly and try another but above all try something.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The government is becoming the family of last resort.

~ Jerry Brown

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days nor in the life of this administration nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.

~ John F. Kennedy

Governments last as long as the undertaxed can defend themselves against the overtaxed.

~ Bernard Berenson

The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbour.

~ Hubert Humphrey

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

~ George Burns

When we got into office the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

~ John F. Kennedy

No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition.

~ Benjamin Disraeli

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.

~ Abraham Lincoln

When I am abroad I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

~ Winston Churchill

The people's right to change what does not work is one of the greatest principles of our system of government.

~ Richard Nixon

No intelligence system can predict what a government will do if it doesn't know itself.

~ J. K. Galbraith

The U.S. Senate - an old scow which doesn't move very fast but never sinks.

~ Everett Dirksen

The supply of government exceeds the demand.

~ Lewis H. Lapham

Tyranny is yielding to the lust of governing.

~ Lord Moulton

God created us to rule, to lead and use all His riches to establish His order

~ Sunday Adelaja

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.

~ Michael Pollan

If I'm going to have baked goods in the morning, the rule is that I have to make them myself.

~ Jenny Slate

It is not good to have a rule of many.

~ Homer