Barbara Tuchman Quotes

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Each age must … contend anew with the question of power and accountability.

Public officers are the trustees of the people.

The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation's greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us

Taking power is fine. But what do you do when you are in power?

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.

It's my job as governor to set a vision.

In politics, as in business, leadership is crucial.

Administrators are there because of the fans and the cricketers to run this game, so credibility of a game, or a board, or even a government for that matter, is important irrespective of what you do. If you are in public life, it is important.

At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose.

Tasmania needs a watchdog, not a lap dog.

Yes, I'm your governor now. I'll take care of you.

Lincoln's leadership is based on a number of precepts, but my favorite one is that he acted in the name, and for the good, of the people.

People in positions of power and privilege have a duty to perform at a higher level. If not them, then who?

Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.

Civilizations do not collapse because the citizenry are corrupt or lazy or anti-intellectual. These people do not have the power and influence to either lead or destroy. Civilizations collapse when those who have power fail to do their jobs.

All government is a trust. Every branch of government is a trust, and immemorially acknowledged to be so.

Certainly I shall not be one of those who, having gained power, do not wish to use it.

All power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise.

Rulers should always remind themselves that they are men like the least of their subjects.

The more authority a person asks for in a democracy, the less privacy they’re entitled to.

Government is not the enemy. Government is simply a tool that can be used wisely or unwisely.

The success of an elected official is doing what everyone knows needs to be done.

The instinct to command others, in its primitive essence, is a carnivorous, altogether bestial and savage instinct. Under the influence of the mental development of man, it takes on a somewhat more ideal form and becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the instrument of reason and the devoted servant of that abstraction, or political fiction, which is called the public good