Rulers Quotes - Page 11

• The United States reaps the thorns its rulers have planted in the world.

  Saddam Hussein

  World, Thorns, United States

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• And what physicians say about disease is applicable here: that at the beginning a disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose; but as time passes, not having been recognized or treated at the outset, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. The same thing occurs in affairs of state; for by recognizing from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to the prudent ruler), they can be cured quickly; but when, not having been recognized, they are not recognized and are left to grow to the extent that everyone recognizes them, there is no longer any cure.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Physicians, Disease, Afar

  "Tact is one of the first of mental virtues, the absence of which is frequently fatal to the best of talents. Without denying that it is a talent of itself, it will suffice if we admit that it supplies the place of many talents".

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• A country of a thousand war-chariots cannot be administered unless the ruler attends strictly to business, punctually observes his promises, is economical in expenditure, loves the people, and uses the labor of the peasantry only at the proper times of year.

  Confucius

  Country, Business, War

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• Children should not be coddled in their intellectual training any more than in their physical; and though the studies should be made interesting the interest should arise out of the studies themselves. We have bred a generation that cannot digest anything intellectual but tablets of peptonized food. One sees that in the popular papers with their brevity, still increasing in brevity as far as brevity can increase, and in the capacity for thought of our rulers.

  Arthur Lynch

  Education, Children, Interesting

  Arthur Lynch (1921). “Moods of Life: Popular Psychological Studies of Affairs of Every Day”

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• It is because freedom means the renunciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Freedom, Mean, Individual Effort

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• It is the obligation of the ruler to continually renew himself in order to renew the people by his example.

  Confucius

  Leadership, Order, People

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• They stood there, King of the Hill, Top of the Heap, Ruler of All They Surveyed, Unimpeachable Monarchs and Presidents, trying to understand what it meant to own a world and how big a world really was.

  Ray Bradbury

  Leadership, Kings, Trying

  Ray Bradbury (2012). “The Martian Chronicles”, p.238, Simon and Schuster

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• To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.

  Plato

  Plato, Lying, Enemy

  Plato (1866). “The Republic of Plato, tr. with an analysis and notes, by J.L. Davies and D.J. Vaughan”, p.80

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• Is it not also true that no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers or enjoins what is for the physician's interest, but that all seek the good of their patients? For we have agreed that a physician strictly so called, is a ruler of bodies, and not a maker of money, have we not?

  Plato

  Plato, Physicians, Body

  Plato (1866). “The Republic of Plato, tr. with an analysis and notes, by J.L. Davies and D.J. Vaughan”, p.22

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• Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love - all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce.

  Plato

  Powerful, Philosophy, Gay

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• The worst of guardians is a cruel ruler. Beware of becoming one of them.

  Muhammad

  Positive, Becoming One, Guardian

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• I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake on Earth as a drop of oil on my foot.

  Gautama Buddha

  Kings, Lakes, Dust

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• The best jihad is to speak a word of justice to an oppressive ruler.

  Muhammad

  Islamic, Justice, Speak

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• 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.

  Plato

  Government, Truth Is, States

  Plato, Julius A. Sigler (1997). “Education: Ends and Means”, p.21, University Press of America

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• Whatever may be, I am still largely the creator and ruler of my emotional destiny.

  Albert Ellis

  Responsibility, Destiny, Emotional

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• We supplicate all rulers not to remain deaf to the cry of mankind. Let them do everything in their power to save peace. By so doing they will spare the world the horrors of a war that would have disastrous consequences, such as nobody can foresee.

  Pope John XXIII

  Military, War, World

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• ...is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? ...the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless.

  Thomas Jefferson

  People, May, Politics

  Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough (1963). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.129, Hackett Publishing

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• Our tendency is to run from the painful realities or try to change them as soon as possible. But cure without care makes us into rulers, controllers, manipulators.

  Henri Nouwen

  Running, Reality, Trying

  Henri J. M. Nouwen (2017). “You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living”, Hachette UK

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• Under the blessings of Divine Providence... It becomes us, in humility, to make our devout acknowledgments to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, for the inestimable civil and religious blessings with which we are favored.

  James K. Polk

  Religious, Humility, Blessing

  James K. Polk's First Annual Message to Congress, memory.loc.gov. December 2, 1845.

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• The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler

  Samuel Morse

  Character, Parent, Moral

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• O God of earth and altar,
  Bow down and hear our cry,
  Our earthly rulers falter,
  Our people drift and die;
  The walls of gold entomb us,
  The swords of scorn divide,
  Take not thy thunder from us,
  But take away our pride.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wall, Pride, People

  Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “A Hymn”

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• You must drop all your democracy. You must not believe in ''the people.'' One class is no better than another. It must be a case of Wisdom, or Truth. Let the working classes be working classes. That is the truth. There must be an aristocracy of people who have wisdom, and there must be a Ruler: a Kaiser: no Presidents and democracies.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Believe, Class, People

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• We owe subjection and obedience to all our kings, whether good or bad, alike, for that has respect unto their office; but as to esteem and affection, these are only due to their virtue.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Kings, Office, Affection

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.220, Delphi Classics

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• Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought.

  Victor Hugo

  Writing, Play, Tyrants

  "Les misérables".

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• By the ruler's cultivation of his own character there is set up the example of the course which all should pursue.

  Confucius

  Love, Inspirational, Funny

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