Quotes About Governance

Everybody is comparing the oil spill to Hurricane Katrina, but the real parallel could be the Iranian hostage crisis. In the late 1970s, the hostage crisis became a symbol of America's inability to take decisive action in the face of pervasive problems. In the same way, the uncontrolled oil plume could become the objective correlative of the country's inability to govern itself.

an eleventh-century CE Muslim prince from Tabaristan wrote in a book for his son, "Make it your constant endeavor to improve cultivation and to govern well; for understand this truth: the kingdom can be held by the army, and the army by gold; and gold is acquired through agricultural development and agricultural development through justice and equity. Therefore be just and equitable.

Good political institutions are those that make it as easy as possible to detect whether a ruler or policy is a mistake, and to remove rulers or policies without violence when they are.

in almost no instance can artificial-rational systems be built and left alone. They require continued attention, rebuilding, and repair. Eternal vigilance is the price of artificial complexity." He noted too, that in a technological age we should ask not who governs, but what governs: `government becomes the business of recognising what is necessary and efficient for the continued functioning and elaboration of large-scale systems and the rational implementation of their manifest requirements.

At a time when actual governance in Europe was as broken and fragmented as it could possibly be, its intellectuals were busying themselves arguing about the exact division of powers within a single, grand, unified, imaginary system of cosmic administration.

Nothing appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Democracy is the worst of all possible evils. Only one man can and should give the orders.

Money is a mechanism for control.

God doesn't need our consent in order to govern us; He made us.

The NCAA is probably the most reprehensible organization God ever created.

If I were a CEO of a company and ran it like God runs the universe, I'd be fired.

Murphy's golden rule: Whoever has the gold, makes the rules.

What discord should we bring into the universe if our prayers were all answered! Then we should govern the world, and not God. And do you think we should govern it better?

The question is not how to get good people to rule; THE QUESTION IS: HOW TO STOP THE POWERFUL from doing as much damage as they can to us.

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.

It's not enough for an official to be good. There has to be a system that forces them to be good.

The great and the good will decide what is good for us and make sure that we get what is good for us, good and hard.

Good intentions are not an excuse for maladministration of this magnitude.

It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws.

There never is a good time for tough decisions. There will always be an election or something else. You have to pick courage and do it. Governance is about taking tough, even unpopular, decisions.

A people can prosper under a very bad government and suffer under a very good one, if in the first case the local administration is effective and in the second it is inefficient.

Wouldst thou know if a people be well governed, or if its laws be good or bad, examine the music it practices.

The good will of the governed will be starved if not fed by the good deeds of the governors.