Olympe de Gouges Quotes

In government, consensus is more important than command; persuasion not only works better than arrogance, it's vital to the democratic process.

What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few?

To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.

Better be wrong with the many than right with the few.

Polls make leadership impossible.

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

To rule is easy, to govern difficult.

Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.

The art of politics is knowing what to do next.

If the critics are right that I've made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

If you want to be loved by everyone, don't go into politics.

There never is a good time for tough decisions. There will always be an election or something else. You have to pick courage and do it. Governance is about taking tough, even unpopular, decisions.

You can't please everybody all the time, but you can please a majority.

There is no school that teaches you how to run a state. You make mistakes, but you learn on the job.

President Clinton does not use polls to reach positions. He takes positions and then uses the polls to survive the experience.

Governing is hard. If you’re in the majority, you’ve got to do the hard work of governing

We will govern as if we had a majority. You simply carry on with your agenda.

If a President doesn't make enemies, he just won't be a very good President, that's all.

Running a country is much more difficult than running a campaign.

Effective leadership may now well require the strength to accept rejection and hostility from a substantial segment of the electorate, while making sure that the disaffected remain a functional minority, especially on election day.

Democratic processes require time.

Campaigns are not, and should not be, democratic processes. Otherwise nothing would ever get done.

Campaigns are partisan. Governing should not be partisan.

Roosevelt knew never to lose control of the majority of American opinion, unlike his greatest democratic contemporaries, Churchill and De Gaulle, who at times suffered spectacular rejections by their electorates.