Rulers Quotes - Page 8

• The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.

  Charles Darwin

  Atheism, Intellect, Affirmative

  Charles Darwin (2016). “The Descent of Man (Diversion Classics)”, p.131, Diversion Books

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• And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge, as their great Creator who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings and a desire to know. But besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible divine right to the most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.

  John Adams

  Education, Character, Mean

  John Adams (2004). “The Portable John Adams”, p.219, Penguin

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• A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.

  Ovid

  Leadership, Vision, Empowering Others

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• An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects.

  Martin Luther

  Religious, Humor, Equality

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• The essence of democracy is not that everyone makes and administers laws but that lawgivers and rulers should be dependent on the people's will in such a way that they may be peaceably changed if conflict occurs.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Freedom, Law, Essence

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist”, p.49, VM eBooks

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• One of our greatest assets is that all men aspire to be equal and free. This fact haunts the rulers of the Kremlin today for even they cannot change this law of nature and they know it. It is up to us, not only by example but by positive acts, to make the most of this driving force within mankind.

  Allen Dulles

  Freedom, Men, Law

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• Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Teaching, Government, People

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aakash Singh, Rimina Mohapatra (2008). “Reading Hegel: The Introductions”, p.115, re.press

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• Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Ambition, Mean, Patriotism

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• Our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own.

  Gore Vidal

  Government, People, Done

  Gore Vidal (2002). “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated, Causes of Conflict in the Last Empire”, p.10, CLAIRVIEW BOOKS

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• The people are the ultimate guardians of their own liberties. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy . . . Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, People, Liberty

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.259, Cambridge University Press

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• "He passed over his fall, and appointed him first of the Apostles; wherefore He said: ' 'Simon, Simon,' etc. (in Ps. cxxix. 2). God allowed him to fall, because He meant to make him ruler over the whole world, that, remembering his own fall, he might forgive those who should slip in the future. And that what I have said is no guess, listen to Christ Himself saying: 'Simon, Simon, etc.'"

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Forgiveness, Fall, Forgiving

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• I mean, what's the elections? You know, two guys, same background, wealth, political influence, went to the same elite university, joined the same secret society where you're trained to be a ruler - they both can run because they're financed by the same corporate institutions.

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Mean, Two

  "Final Edition". Book by Wallace Shawn, 2011.

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• The cliché organizes life; it expropriates people's identity; it becomes ruler, defense lawyer, judge, and the law.

  Vaclav Havel

  Law, People, Judging

  "Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvížďala". Book by Václav Havel, translated by Paul Wilson. Chapter 5: "The Politics of Hope", 1990.

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• I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth, a nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light, and peace, there is no other ruler besides the sea.

  Bernard Moitessier

  Beautiful, Cheating, Peace

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• If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler's bidding.

  Sun Tzu

  War, Fighting, Victory

  Sun Tzu, Julius Caesar, Einhard, Niccolò Machiavelli, Carl von Clausewitz (2016). “Strategy Six Pack”, p.24, Lulu.com

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• Hence the saying: The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, War, Enlightened

  Sun Tzu, Julius Caesar, Einhard, Niccolò Machiavelli, Carl von Clausewitz (2016). “Strategy Six Pack”, p.29, Lulu.com

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• No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, War, Fighting

  Sun Tzu, General Press (2016). “The Art of War”, p.61, GENERAL PRESS

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• There are three ways in which a ruler can bring misfortune on his army: By commanding the army to advance or to retreat, being ignorant of the fact that it cannot obey. This is called hobbling the army. By attempting to govern an army in the same way as he administers a kingdom, being ignorant of the conditions which obtain in an army. This causes restlessness in the soldier's minds. By employing the officers of his army without discrimination, through ignorance of the military principle of adaptation to circumstances. This shakes the confidence of the soldiers.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, Military, War

  Sun Tzu (2010). “The Art of War”, p.10, Cosimo, Inc.

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• An enlightened ruler doesnot worry about people not knowing him; he worriesabout not knowing people.

  Zhuge Liang

  Leadership, Art, War

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• Therefore, a prudent ruler ought not to keep faith when by so doing it would be against his interest, and when the reasons which made him bind himself no longer exist. If men were all good, this precept would not be a good one; but as they are bad, and would not observe their faith with you, so you are not bound to keep faith with them.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Art, War, Men

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2017). “The Prince”, p.56, Knickerbocker Classics

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• When your weapons are dulled and ardour damped, your strength exhausted and treasure spent, neighboring rulers will take advantage of your distress to act. And even though you have wise counsellors, none will be able to lay good plans for the future. Thus, while we have heard of blundering swiftness in war, we have not yet seen a clever operation that was prolonged.

  Sun Tzu

  Wise, Clever, War

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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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• 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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