Quotes About Governance

When those who are governed do too little, those who govern can - and often will - do too much.

The Right Divine of Kings to govern wrong.

It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution that good government is effected.

For those who govern, the first thing required is indifference to newspapers.

What we have to do is strike a balance between the idea that government should do everything and the idea, the belief, that government ought to do nothing. Strike a balance.

The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

Aid can work where there is good governance, and usually fails where governments are unable or unwilling to commit aid to improve the lives of their people.

They should rule who are able to rule best.

They think democracy - I used to say "damn the democracy", because it's not a stable government.

The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it.

Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.

Governments are not representative.

There was one issue on which there seemed to be almost unanimity: the Internet should not be managed by any government, national or multinational.

That rule is the better which is exercised over better subjects.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.

I believe the test of government is the contentment of the people.

Governments arise either out of the people or over the people.

Good government could never be a substitute for government by the people themselves.

Even if a government can be constitutional without being democratic, it cannot be democratic without being constitutional.

Influence is not government.

A newly elected representative quickly discovers that his job in government-aside from making new laws-is to act as a broker, middleman, special pleader and finagler.