Lilia Shevtsova Quotes

The government never does anything successfully.

Whenever you're faced with an explanation of what's going on in Washington, the choice between incompetence and conspiracy, always choose incompetence.

We've seen the hubris. And now we're seeing the scandals.

The purpose of whistleblowing is to expose secret and wrongful acts by those in power in order to enable reform.

Yes, citizens, Iturbide was a traitor, a hypocrite and an impious man who destroyed the assembly in which the people had deposited their sovereignty in order to appropriate it all to himself

If you put too much aid too quickly into weak institutions, you have corruption and failure.

Within the Russian system, everything depends on the character of those few who hold full power in their hands. The position of the individual within present-day Russia has been described as follows: far-reaching economic security by sacrificing personal liberty.

The right of initiative...belongs exclusively to ME, and is indissolubly bound to the autocratic power entrusted to ME by GOD....No one is called to take upon himself before ME petitions about the general welfare and needs of the state. Such departures from the order established by existing legislation can only hinder me in the execution of MY aims

Having for centuries had no sense of self esteem outside the state, we found ourselves wanting our old rulers back, the rulers who provided a sense of order, inspired patriotic fervor and the belief that we were great nation. We yearned for monumental--if repressive--leaders like Ivan the Terrible or Stalin. Yes they killed and imprisoned but how great were our victories and parades. So what if Stalin ruled by fear? That was simply a fear of one’s life. However terrifying, it was not as existentially threatening as the fear of freedom, of individual choice, with no one but oneself to blame if democracy turned into disarray and capitalism into corruption.

Can we wonder that all has gone ill with us when our love of office survives in our very ruin?

Perestroika is our last chance. If we stop, it will be our death.

A monarch is at all times that of an enemy of the people," acting by force, fear, corruption, and delusion through his three human instruments, the soldier, the lawyer, and the priest, to produce in all times and at all places the greatest infelicity of the greatest number.

Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralyzed individual initiative and effort; the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life, and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at every step has made effort bitter, labor a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man.

The Pakistan Cricket Board is a long-standing joke, its chairmen replaced with every change of government.

Obviously, I believe that Rahm Emanuel's leadership has failed. Obviously, I believe we need change.

High-level corruption, inefficiency, non-governance, and policy paralysis have crippled the nation's economy.

Here's what I have to say: Obama is a disaster, and Washington politicians are worthless.

Government screws up.

We can't entrepreneur our way around bad leadership. We can't entrepreneur our way around bad policies. Those of us who have managed to entrepreneur ourselves out of it are living in a very false security in Africa.

Leaders cling to power in a socialist state like Venezuela by buying votes and manipulating elections.

Mobutu does not think he is God.

Theranos was a combination of fraud with hubris mixed with incompetence.

Truth is, only the useless get to the top in this country.

Socialists cry “Power to the people”, and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean - power over people, power to the State.

The foremost or indeed sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.