Chanakya Quotes

We actually have to have a government. We have to have people confirmed and put into office.

Mitch Daniels in Indiana was the best governor in America for eight years. I've gone to Indianapolis to study with him.

I'm a former governor, and so I was the chief executive, and when the legislature wasn't in session, I was running the state.

One must realise that it is not a child's play to run a government.

What struck me more than anything is how the people that are involved in government start out from a place of really wanting to do well, no matter what kind of political spectrum they're on, how they have to hold onto that warm fuzzy place in their heart while they're stuck in the machine.

People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.

The State is not, as many political scientists would make it, an inanimate thing; it consists of people, human beings, each of whom operates under an inner compulsion to get the most out of life with the least expenditure of labor.

The American government is a rule of the people, by the people, for the bosses.

Most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or as political operatives--professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems.

If people of one''s own side have good conduct, it adds power to oneself. The misconduct on the contrary render one powerless. The enemy taks advantage of it. A skilled statesman never allows enemy to win over.

People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.

Everybody in the world is capable of democratic development. Some people in the world are unlucky enough to get stuck with really bad political leadership and with really bad political institutions.

"Government," says Swift, "is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads."

I find that the great majority of public servants across the entire political spectrum come because they believe in the United States and they want to change the world.

If you would govern a state of a thousand chariots (a small-to-middle-size state), you must pay strict attention to business, be true to your word, be economical in expenditure and love the people.

The requisites of government are that there be sufficiency of food, sufficiency of military equipment, and the confidence of the people in their ruler.

Politics I take to be the activity of attending to the general arrangements of a set of people whom chance or choice have brought together. In this sense, families, clubs, and learned societies have their 'politics'. But the communities in which this manner of activities is pre-eminent are the hereditary co-operative groups, many of them of ancient lineage, all of them aware of a past, a present and a future, which we call states.

The plain truth is that what holds a free state together is neither general will nor a common interest, but simply politics itself.

You can't manage [country] the way you would manage a family business.

What people do who go into politics I can't think; it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few hundred acres.

Where the people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato.

There must be public servants who are working regularly among the people.

Good governance depends on ability to take responsibility by both administration as well as people.

The best government in the world, the best religion, the best traditions of any people, depend upon the good or evil of the men and women who administer them.

The ordinary affairs of a nation offer little difficulty to a person of any experience.