Lao Tzu Quotes

In order to manage such affairs as war and peace, treaties, alliances, marriage, the means of increasing one’s territories, the loyalty of the people, parties and other business of the kingdom, it seems to me that there is no more useful knowledge than the study of history.

To know how to dissimulate is the knowledge of kings.

The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

The art of government is the art of negotiating and compromise.

Government ... is neither business, nor technology, nor applied science. It is the art of making men live together in peace and with reasonable happiness.

[Describing her role:] It's like running a big corporation and a little country at the same time.

We live in a world of competing sorrows ... to govern is to choose.

Conquering the world on horseback is easy; it is dismounting and governing that is hard.

Deception is the knowledge of kings.

Truth is the glue that holds government together. Compromise is the oil that makes governments go.

Roosevelt is a leader whose particular genius is to try to run other people’s business.

Military action without politics is like a tree without a root.

In the first place, most princes apply themselves to the arts of war, in which I have neither ability nor interest, instead of to the good arts of peace. They are generally more set on acquiring new kingdoms by hook or by crook than on governing well those that they already have.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.

To rule is easy, to govern difficult.

Churchill knew the importance of peace, and he also knew the price of it. Churchill finally got his voice, of course. He stressed strategy, but it was his voice that armed England at last with the old-fashioned moral concepts of honor and duty, justice and mercy.

The world cannot be governed without juggling.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

A prime minister has to keep a certain balance when dealing with sensitive issues.

To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.

A real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbor's throat without having his neighbor notice it.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.

A statesman wants courage and a statesman wants vision; but believe me, after six months' experience, he wants first, second, third and all the time - patience.