Quotes about Governance

Rules help govern and steer a relationship along, so they're good things. But they become bad things when they become the narrow gate though which the relationship must always pass. When this happens, the rules become the basis for the relationship and, in a sense, become a substitute for the relationship.

Advise the ruler to govern the state as one cooks a small fish - that is, don't turn it so often in the pan that it disintegrates

Man is always the master, even in his weaker and most abandoned state; but in his weakness and degradation he is the foolish master who misgoverns his household.

He only is fitted to command and control who has succeeded in commanding and controlling himself.

The science that studies the supreme good for man is politics.

What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle - the sheet anchor of American republicanism.

With words we govern men.

Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice.

Remember, your prerogative is to govern, and not to serve the things of this world.

Tyrannical governance is unjust, since it is ordered to the private good of the ruler, not to the common good . . . And so disturbance of such governance does not have the character of rebellion . . . Rather, tyrants, who by seeking greater domination incite discontent and rebellion in the people subject to the them, are the rebels.

Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both