Quotes About Rulers

What was wanted was an élite to underpin the rulers, themselves in turn supported and buttressed by a population which presumably understood, approved, and legitimated the aims of such an élite. Whoever knows the Middle East will agree that such a quest was the political equivalent of the search for the philosophical stone.

Emperors are vain and useless things.

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right… and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.

Before about 1800, only two important attempts were made to establish income taxes—one in Florence during the fifteenth century, and the other in France during the eighteenth. Generally speaking, both represented efforts by grasping rulers to mulct their subjects.

Apparently these new rulers of the world did not indulge in any drinking or smoking to soften their moods when they met, which Menelaus knew to be a big mistake. The Congress of the United States, back before the Disunion, always met sober, and look at what had come of that.

When fate summons, monarchs must obey.

Obviously no two creation stories can both be true. All of those invented by the many known thousands of religions and sects in fact have certainly been false. A great many educated citizens have realized that their own faiths are indeed false, or at least questionable in details. But they understand the rule attributed to the Roman stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger that religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

Human rulers get poisoned or decapitated or simply voted out of office all the time, as our set of personal desires, our chimpanzee DNA, rears its individualistic head.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

It's a primitive thing, kings and queens.

It matters also that both Henry and his daughter Elizabeth were not just rulers but consummate performers, masters of political propaganda and political theater. They

Some wars have been due to the lust of rulers for power and glory, or to revenge to wipe out the humiliation of a former defeat.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

Kings may be judges of the earth, but wise men are the judges of kings.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

With popular rulers, the wife can become the guardian of their greatness: Peter the Great was succeeded by his wife, Catherine I. Sometimes the wives are an improvement.

Because every ruler celebrated his conquests by setting torch to the nearest library. Did not Julius Caesar incinerate the scrolls in the great library at Alexandria during his campaign against the republicans in Africa? Or General Stilicho, leader of the Vandals, order the burning of the Sybillene prophecies in Rome?

a society of equal laws, governed by equality of status and of speech, and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else.

States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers. —PLATO, The Republic

All of these men are thinking mostly about ruling and rulers. Who should rule, and how. Who should have power, how they should get it, and how they should use it.

For a very long time, and among a large number of peoples, political power has belonged to the owners of the land.

I am glad, brothers and sisters, that our church is persecuted precisely for its preferential option for the poor and for trying to become incarnate on behalf of he poor. And I want to say to all the people, to rulers, to the rich and powerful: If you do not become poor, if you do not concern yourselves for the poverty of our people, as though they were your own family, you will not be able to save society." —July 15, 1979

we are the lords of all eternity