“A government does not, in general, just go about the world doing good. It has to be pushed into it.”

Political Disquisitions (1774)
Context: That government only can be pronounced consistent with the design of all government, which allows to the governed the liberty of doing what, consistently with the general good, they may desire to do, and which only forbids their doing the contrary. Liberty does not exclude restraint; it only excludes unreasonable restraint. To determine precisely how far personal liberty is compatible with the general good, and of the propriety of social conduct in all cases, is a matter of great extent, and demands the united wisdom of a whole people. And the consent of the whole people, as far as it can be obtained, is indispensably necessary to every law, by which the whole people are to be bound; else the whole people are enslaved to the one, or the few, who frame the laws for them.

Speech in the House of Commons (9 March 1915) on the Defence of the Realm (Amendment) Bill, quoted in The Times (10 March 1915), p. 14
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Source: The Shock of the New (1981), p. 17

Source: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

Un ministre est excusable du mal qu’il fait, lorsque le gouvernail de l’État est forcé dans sa main par les tempêtes; mais dans le calme il est coupable de tout le bien qu’il ne fait pas.
Le Siècle de Louis XIV, ch. VI: "État de la France jusqu’à la mort du cardinal Mazarin en 1661" (1752) Unsourced paraphrase or variant translation: Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
Citas

The Five faces of Corruption, p. 45
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

Source: The Truth About Forever

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (28 September 1965), quoted in The Times (29 September 1965), p. 5.
Prime Minister

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!