Quotes About Governance

Trust is good, control is better.

A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men.

Man should rule with computers, not vice versa.

One cannot govern with 'buts'.

We still go out and elect people who we think are going to govern and better our interests. So we may not have the same confidence in the people we elect, but we still go out and elect them.

Human conduct can be regulated, and it will be regulated! The

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.

There will be no end to the troubles of the state or indeed of humanity until philosophers become kings or until those we now call kings really and truly become philosophers.

He who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.

Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race. (Republic 473c-d)

States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers.

those who govern ought not to be lovers of the task? For, if they are, there will be rival lovers, and they will fight.

Unless, said I, either philosophers become kings in our states or those whom we now call our kings and rulers take to the pursuit of philosophy seriously and adequately, and there is a conjunction of these two things, political power and philosophic intellgence, while the motley horde of the natures who at present pursue either apart from the other are compulsory excluded, there can be no cessation of troubles, dear Glaucon, for our states, nor, I fancy, for the human race either. (473d-e)

Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.

For it is likely that if a city of good men came to be, there would be a fight over not ruling, just as there is now over ruling; and there it would become manifest that a true ruler really does not naturally consider his own advantage but rather that of the one who is ruled.

You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

That the makers of laws are the majority who are weak; and they make laws and distribute praises and censures with a view to themselves and to their own interests.

The ruler who is good for anything ought not to beg his subjects to be ruled by him, although the present governors of mankind are of a different stamp.

For we cannot suppose that States are made of 'oak and rock,' and not out of the human natures which are in them, and which in a figure turn the scale and draw other things after them? Yes

no one is willing to govern; because no one likes to take in hand the reformation of evils which are not his concern without renumeration.

the true ruler is not meant by nature to regard his own interest, but that of his subjects

Mas la verdad es, creo yo, lo siguiente: la ciu­dad en que estén menos ansiosos por ser gobernantes quienes hayan de serlo, ésa ha de ser forzosamente la que viva mejor y con menos disensiones que ninguna; y la que tenga otra clase de gobernantes, de modo distinto.

The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become rulers in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands." ? Plato, Plato's Republic