Quotes About Rulers

This magistrate is not the king. The people are the king.

We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.

I've studied kings, so I'm very aware of the feet of clay of authority.

Grammar, which knows how to control even kings.

Kings can be autocratic, usually are. But queens give up some power to survive. They must work more closely with ministers, accept the views of others. They are hailed as skilled in compromise and bringing people together, whereas kings are congratulated for deciding, commanding.

Palaces are built on the people's bones. To tell the truth, the masses would be better off without kingdoms, which is why it takes a gifted ruler to tell just the right lies so they never realize it.

Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest.

That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

a truth about human society: not everyone wanted freedom. When a people willingly or unwillingly become wards of their rulers, they eventually lose their capacity for self-determination. Like helpless children, they actually prefer security in exchange for their freedom. Better the misery they know while being taken care of than the misery they do not know being freely accountable for their own actions.

In light of this theological fear, some try to reinterpret this reference of gods or sons of God in Psalm 82 as a poetic expression of human judges or rulers on earth metaphorically taking the place of God, the ultimate judge, by determining justice in his likeness and image. But there are three big reasons why this cannot be so:

The giants had been brought to all these cities to accomplish mighty feats of industry for the Rephaim. The purpose had been to glorify the gods and build an empire of power for the pantheon. But it had all gotten out of control. Now, the entire civilization was in jeopardy of collapsing. The giants were large, strong, warrior-like, and organized. They appointed leaders to press their demands upon the Rephaim rulers of all the cities. Revolution seemed inevitable.

He saw them as a mob, carried away by their own bloodlust, and just as easily manipulated by their rulers as their entertainers. A crowd of otherwise intelligent or moderate individuals, could become a hive of unthinking insects, hornets incited by a wave of the hand or the proclamation of a meaningless slogan.

Within this divinely anointed compilation of Proverbs, there is a deep well of wisdom to reign in life and to succeed in our destiny. The wisdom that God has designed for us to receive will cause us to excel—to rise up as rulers-to-be in the earth and in the spiritual realm. The kingdom of God is brought into the earth as we implement the heavenly wisdom of Proverbs.

When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom," Plato writes, "has evil cupbearers presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine of freedom, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a plentiful draught, she calls them to account and punishes them.

When the Many are rulers, it cannot but be that, again, knavery is bred in the state; but now the knaves do not grow to hate one another—they become fast friends. For they combine together to maladminister the public concerns. This goes on until one man takes charge of affairs for the Many and puts a stop to the knaves. As a result of this, he wins the admiration of the Many, and, being so admired, lo! you have your despot again;

No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince ever says, 'This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.

In the past, rulers led their troops into battle and, even in peacetime, called themselves fathers of their people. And modern politics retains abundant masculine rituals. Prime minister's question time in Britain, for instance, is a stylised duel and tournament redolent of testosterone.

Ascendancy was but one of the countless mysteries of the world, a world where uncertainty ruled all—god and mortal alike—and its rules were impenetrable.

Gothos walked into the heart of his city, to where the Jaghut who ruled collectively were all gathered. Among them, to be sure, there were great minds, and many who still held to the ideal of civilization. But then Gothos ascended the central speaker's dais. He began his oration, and when, at last, he was done, he was met with silence. On that day, the Jaghut civilization ended. And in the days that followed, Gothos was named the Lord of Hate.

Shan slid up beside Cotillion, eyes fixed on Tulas Shorn. A moment later Baran, Rood, Blind, and Gear arrived, padding round the rulers of the Realm of Shadow, and onward to encircle the Tiste Edur. Who held out his hands, as if inviting the beast to draw close. None did. 'They preferred you living, I think', Cotillion observed. 'The dead surrender so much.

Now as I grow older, Meto, I grow less and less able to tolerate the stupidity of the people and the wickedness of their rulers. I have seen too much suffering created by ambitious men who care only for themselves.

Coffeehouses were considered to be such hotbeds of revolutionary thought that rulers from Turkey to England outlawed them, sometimes on pain of death.

The sight of this place was overpowering, simply because it was abandoned. It had not been just a noble family who had lived here, but a dynasty of great rulers. The Palindrakes had been reduced horribly.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. —Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928)