448 Governance Quotes

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.

No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

I would suggest respectfully to the president that he is not the sole decider. The decider is a shared and joint responsibility.

This brings us to Anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished.

It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force.

If politics and business fail us, of course the military will be called in. In the developing world, the massive and repeated ecological disasters are quite commonly met by the military.

Political people don't solve stuff - not really. Political people are like guys in pop music.

Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism.

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.

I would not vote for the mayor. It's not just because he didn't invite me to dinner, but because on my way into town from the airport there were such enormous potholes.

Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy.

There ought to be limits to freedom.

First, we would not accept a treaty that would not have been ratified, nor a treaty that I thought made sense for the country.

Dealing with Congress is a matter of give and take. The president doesn't get everything he wants, the Congress doesn't get everything they want. But we're finding good common ground. A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.

I mean, if you've ever been a governor of a state, you understand the vast potential of broadband technology, you understand how hard it is to make sure that physics, for example, is taught in every classroom in the state. It's difficult to do. It's, like, cost-prohibitive.

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

Democratical States must always feel before they can see: it is this that makes their Governments slow, but the people will be right at last.

Lenience will operate with greater force, in some instances than rigor. It is therefore my first wish to have all of my conduct distinguished by it.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

The tumultuous populace of large cities are ever to be dreaded. Their indiscriminate violence prostrates for the time all public authority, and its consequences are sometimes extensive and terrible.

I have concluded that the U.N. can do a few things well.

Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around.

The American people are doing their job today. They should be given a chance to show whether they wish to preserve the principles of individual and local responsibility and mutual self-help before they embark on what I believe to be a disastrous system. I feel sure they will succeed if given the opportunity.

My mission is to lead the country out of a bad situation of corruption, depression and slavery. After I rid the country of these vices, I will then organize and supervise a general election of a genuinely democratic civilian government.

One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money.

Let us restore the king to his throne, and let the king in future agree to govern with the consent of Parliament. Let us restore the old church, with its bishops, since that is what most of the people want; but since the Puritans and Separatists and Baptists have served us well in the war, let us not persecute them anymore but let them worship as they like, outside of the established church. And so let us have peace and liberty.

Not what they want but what is good for them.

To give the devil his due, he restored justice, as well distributive as commutative, almost to it's ancient dignity and splendour; the judges without covetousness discharging their duties according to law and equity... His own court also was regulated according to a severe discipline; here no drunkard, nor whoremonger, nor any guilty of bribery, was to be found, without severe punishment. Trade began again to prosper; and in a word, gentle peace to flourish all over England.

The Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland and of the Dominions thereunto belonging, shall be and reside in one person, and the people assembled in parliament; the style of which person shall be 'The Lord Protector of the Commonwealth'... That Oliver Cromwell, Captain General of the forces of England, Scotland and Ireland, shall be, and is hereby declared to be, Lord Protector...for his life.

In the modern corporation the decisive power, that of the managers, is derived from no one but the managers themselves controlled by nobody and nothing and responsible to no one. It is in the most literal sense unfounded, unjustified, uncontrolled and irresponsible power. -- The Future of Industrial Man (1942)

Legitimate is a power when it is justified by an ethical or metaphysical principle that has been accepted by a society.

Or, selon mon advis, entre toutes les seigneuries du monde, dont j'ay connoissance, ou la chose publique est mieux traictee, et ou regne moins de violence sur le peuple, et ou il n'y a nuls edifices abatus, ni demolis pour guerre, c'est Angleterre; et tombe le sort et le malheur sur ceux qui font la guerre.

Le pire des Etats, c'est l'Etat populaire.

If you can discover a better way of life than office-holding for your future rulers, a well-governed city becomes a possibility. For only in such a state will those rule who are truly rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness--a good and wise life.

Parties are instruments of government....The business of parties is not just win elections. It is to govern. And a party cannot govern if it is disunited. (Kings County Democratic dinner Brooklyn, NY, 1965)

Enforced uniformity confounds civil and religious liberty and denies the principles of Christianity and civility. No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will.

It is the will and command of God that (since the coming of his Son the Lord Jesus) a permission of the most paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or antichristian consciences and worships, be granted to all men in all nations and countries; and they are only to be fought against with that sword which is only (in soul matters) able to conquer, to wit, the sword of God's Spirit, the Word of God.

When the chips are down and the decisions are made as to who the candidates will be, then the 11th commandment prevails and everybody goes to work, and that is: Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.

Islam is not a dull religion limited to the relation between man and his God, Islam is a political religion. Its politics are mixed up with its other rules and worship, and as the governments have political dimensions, Islam also has other political dimensions.

Screw the world. Do you really think we ought to govern ourselves based on what the world thinks of us?

Americans ought be listening to Russ Feingold in these defining days for the Republic, because what the Democratic senator from Wisconsin is saying goes to the heart of the question of whether a nation founded in revolt against monarchy will be ruled by laws or by the crude whims of an intemperate sovereign and his out-of-control administration.

Is there anything in which the people of this age and country differ more from those of other lands and former times than in this - their ability to preserve order and protect rights without the aid of government? ... We are realizing the paradox, 'that country is governed best which is governed least.' I no longer fear lynch law. Let the people be intelligent and good, and I am not sure but their impulsive, instinctive verdicts and sentences and executions, unchecked by the rules and technicalities of law, are more likely to be according to substantial justice than the decisions of courts and juries.

Constitutional statutes ... which embody the settled public opinion of the people who enacted them and whom they are to govern - can always be enforced. But if they embody only the sentiments of a bare majority, pronounced under the influence of a temporary excitement, they will, if strenuously opposed, always fail of their object; nay, they are likely to injure the cause they are framed to advance.

It is authority that provokes revolution....This occurs when a feeling of impunity takes root among the elite: We are allowed anything, we can do anything. This is a delusion, but it rests on a certain rational foundation. For a while it does indeed look as if they can do whatever they want. Scandal after scandal and illegality after illegality go unpunished. The people remain silent...They are afraid and do not yet feel their own strength. At the same time, they keep a detailed account of the wrongs, which at one particular moment are to be added up. The choice of that moment is the greatest riddle of history. (Shah of Shahs, Vintage International edition, p. 106)

All histories do shew, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.

Praesidibus onerandas tributo provincias suadentibus rescripsit boni pastoris esse tondere pecus, non deglubere.

On the fifth day the Governor of the town called all the tribal chieftains to an audience in the market square, to hear their grievances. He didn't always do anything about them, but at least they got heard, and he nodded a lot, and everyone felt better about it at least until they got home. This is politics.

The principle of rotation... in the body of [bank] directors... breaks in upon the esprit de corps so apt to prevail in permanent bodies; it gives a chance for the public eye penetrating into the sanctuary of those proceedings and practices, which the avarice of the directors may introduce for their personal emolument, and which the resentments of excluded directors, or the honesty of those duly admitted, might betray to the public; and it gives an opportunity at the end of the year, or at other periods, of correcting a choice, which on trial, proves to have been unfortunate.

It is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, thus far shalt thou go and no further. But in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle.

It is impossible today to entirely root out corruption. Our task is to reduce its scale and bring it down to the level that would not prevent the country's development.

Un ministre est excusable du mal qu'il fait, lorsque le gouvernail de l'Etat est force dans sa main par les tempetes; mais dans le calme il est coupable de tout le bien qu'il ne fait pas.

In excited states of the public mind they have scarcely a discretion at all; the tendency of the public perturbation determines what shall and what shall not be dealt with. But, upon the other hand, in quiet times statesmen have great power; when there is no fire lighted, they can settle what fire shall be lit. And as the new suffrage is happily to be tried in a quiet time, the responsibility of our statesmen is great because their power is great too.

Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required - are impediments - in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham - a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman - to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm.

His wife 'ruled the roost,' and in governing the governor, governed the province, which might thus be said to be under petticoat government.

Every physician, shoemaker, mechanic or educator must know his shortcomings if he is to do his work and make his living. For some decades, you have begun to play a governing role on this earth. It is on your thinking and your actions that the future of humanity depends. But your teachers and masters do not tell you how you really think and are; nobody dares to voice the one criticism of you which could make you capable of governing your own fate. You are 'free' only in one sense: free from education in governing your life yourself, free from self-criticism.

As the British Constitution is the most subtile organism which has proceeded from the womb and the long gestation of progressive history, so the American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off by the brain and purpose of man.

There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order; the firmest foundations for the development of individual character; and the best provision for the happiness of the nation at large.

All executive power - from the reign of ancient kings to the rule of modern dictators - has the outward appearance of efficiency.

Liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery.

Whereas the glory of Almighty God and the good of mankind is the reason and end of government, therefore, government in itself is a venerable ordinance of God.

I think I can save the British Empire from anything - except the British.

The House of Commons has lifted our affairs above the mechanical sphere into the human sphere.

There should be on great occasions a sense of crowd and urgency. There should be a sense of the importance of much that is said, and a sense that great matters are being decided, there and then by the House... It has a collective personality which enjoys the regard of the public, and which imposes itself upon the conduct not only of individual Members but of parties.

Resolve your mental energy into abstraction, your physical energy into action. Allow yourself to fall in with the natural order of phenomena, without admitting the element of self, and the empire will be governed.

Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.

To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right nor the knowledge nor the virtue.

It seems to me that political parties or the state cannot, in any society, change human nature. We, however, could and should try to create a structure with which we disencourage the worse and bring about the good and natural sides of man and society.

'Of course we will have fascism in America but we will call it democracy!'

'There is no dictatorship in Louisiana. There is a perfect democracy there, and when you have a perfect democracy it is pretty hard to tell it from a dictatorship.'

Whoever in his public services is handcuffed and shackled by the vice of consistency will be a man not free to act as various questions come before him from time to time; he will be a statesman locked in a prison house, keys to which are in the keeping of days and events that are dead. Let me quote Emerson: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen.'

The following is decreed and ordered to be carried into execution as soon as convenient: I. That a suspension bridge be built from Oakland Point to Goat Island, and then to Telegraph Hill; provided such bridge can be built without injury to the navigable waters of the Bay of San Francisco. II. That the Central Pacific Railroad Company be granted franchises to lay down tracks and run cars from Telegraph Hill and along the city front to Mission Bay. III. That all deeds by the Washington Government since the establishment of our Empire are hereby decreed null and void unless our Imperial signature is first obtained thereto.

The politicians pontificate and manoeuvre with eloquent manifestos and pronouncements saying little about the challenges we must confront.

With hindsight, the Samoa system with appropriate modifications ought to have been adopted. The complete acceptance of western democratic structures, apart from the appointment of Bose Levu Vakaturaga appointees in the Senate, in some respect was in advance of the understanding of democratic principles, particularly in the rural areas.

Opportunity marries with circumstance and is midwife to the resultant bartering of public office. The mutuality is advantage to the parties involved merely facilitates the spread of such practices. When it reaches the point of being commonplace and is pragmatically perceived as the most practical means of getting things done, it has become systemic and difficult to eradicate.

Those who decry the rule of law as a Western principle or an imported construct, misunderstand the concept. It is about abiding by a set of standards for the well-being of society as a whole.

To say that power should have been returned to the Fijian chiefs is to ignore what occurred between 1874 and 1970.

Corruption undermines public confidence in our country and institutions. It is a huge cost to the economy. Combating it will take courage, determination and perseverance. The most effective means of doing it is by creating a climate not receptive to corruption.

'We, the members of this country need to rectify this omission (of having failed to dedicate the Parliament to God previously) by dedicating the Parliament and those who serve through it to our Heavenly Father, who directs and guides us in our daily deliberations.'

The Islamic order can only be established in countries where Muslims represent the majority of the population. If this is not the case, the Islamic order is reduced to mere power (as the other element - an Islamic society - is missing) and may turn to violence. The non-Muslim minorities within an Islamic state, on condition that they are loyal, enjoy religious freedom and all protection. - ibid., p. 49

Cuba is a democracy.

We live in a global economy, but the political organization of our global society is woefully inadequate. We are bereft of the capacity to preserve peace and to counteract the excesses of the financial markets. Without these controls, the global economy, is liable to break down

When all is said, we are ruled by the amateurs and the second-rate. The methods of our departments would bring any private firm to bankruptcy. The methods of Parliament - pardon me - would disgrace any board of directors. Our rulers pretend to buy expert knowledge, but they never pay the price for it that a business man would pay, and if they get it they have not the courage to use it. Where is the inducement for a man of genius to sell his brains to our insipid governors? And yet knowledge is the only power - now as ever. A little mechanical device will wreck your navies. A new chemical combination will upset every rule of war. It is the same with our commerce. One or two minute changes might sink Britain to the level of Ecuador, or give China the key of the world's wealth. And yet we never dream that these things are possible. We think our castles of sand are the ramparts of the universe.

It is the integrative power of vision-logic, I believe, and not the indissociation of tribal magic or the imperialism of mythic involvement that is deperately needed on a global scale. For it is vision-logic with its centauric/planetary worldview that, in my opinion, holds the only hope for the integration of the biosphere and the noosphere, the supranational organization of planetary consciousness, the genuine recognition of ecological balance, the unrestrained and unforced forms of global discourse, the nondominating and noncoercive forms of federated states, the unrestrained flow of worldwide communicative exchange, the production of genuine world citizens, and the enculturation of female agency (i.e., the integration of male and female, in both the noosphere and the biosphere) - all of which, in my opinion, is nevertheless simply the platform for the truly interesting forms of higher and transpersonal states of consciousness lying in our collective future - if there is one.

When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from the clouds, whom none have seen and none are ready to name, I lapse into a dream, as it were. I see children playing on the grass; their voices are shrill and discordant as children's are; they are restive and quarrelsome; they cannot agree to any common plan; their play annoys them; it goes poorly. And one says, let us make Jack the master; Jack knows all about it; Jack will tell us what each is to do and we shall all agree. But Jack is like all the rest; Helen is discontented with her part and Henry with his, and soon they fall again into their old state. No, the children must learn to play by themselves; there is no Jack the master. And in the end slowly and with infinite disappointment they do learn a little; they learn to forbear, to reckon with another, accept a little where they wanted much, to live and let live, to yield when they must yield; perhaps, we may hope, not to take all they can. But the condition is that they shall be willing at least to listen to one another, to get the habit of pooling their wishes. Somehow or other they must do this, if the play is to go on; maybe it will not, but there is no Jack, in or out of the box, who can come to straighten the game.

So LSM stays in. No ifs, buts, maybes or anything else. When I see the security people making sane arguments and agreeing on something, that will change. Quite frankly, I expect hell to freeze over before that happens, and pigs will be nesting in trees. But hey, I can hope. -- 10/1/07 -- http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Pluggable_Security