Ai Weiwei Quotes

Any country is hard to govern, even a very small country. It's not a question of whether the country is large or small. It's a question of how you relate to the work, to what extent you feel responsible for it. Russia is also hard to govern. Russia is at the development stage of both its political system and the creation of a market-based economy. It's a complicated process, but very interesting. Russia, actually, is not just a large country, it's a great country. I mean its traditions, and its cultural particularities.

If you mean you think it is my job to go into the secret passage first, O Thorin Thrain’s son Oakenshield, may your beard grow ever longer,” he said crossly, “say so at once and have done!

The worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single imbecile, but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of three or four hundred imbeciles.

I think the chair's job is to be fair and I think the job of all of the vice chairs is to make sure that happens. And we have really robust conversations about what balance is, and it's not easy.

I mean, on virtually every major issue before this country that is the natural purview of the federal government, it's important to have some specificity about what you're going to do if you want to be the president. And so I agree that, up until this point, it hasn't been a huge factor.

lf there is anything that puzzles me in this game lt is that the longer that you are in the job of Prime Minister, the harder you have to work to do your job. With anything else, such as stenography, administering a store, or whatever done it for nine or ten years you get to know the ropes pretty well and it becomes easy and you can spend a lot of time playing golf or something. l feel that the more you know, the more you have to know and the more problems come.

Obasanjo has openly endorsed violence as a means of governance, embraced and empowered individuals whose avowed declarations, confessions and acts are cynically contrary to the mandate that alone upholds the legitimacy and dignity of his office.

When we speak of power, we mean man's control over the minds and actions of other men. By political power we refer to the mutual relations of control among the holders of public authority and between the latter and the people at large.

[Late-night host] is not really a job for a woman. You can't have kids and be a late-night host.I mean Samantha Bee has children, but you're there all day and all night. No one has a life outside of it. I would never try to have a family. I care much more about a career anyway, than having a family, so that's my own prerogative. It's just not something that a woman.

Money will not purchase character or good government.

Politics is noble; it is one of the highest forms of charity, as Paul VI used to say. We sully it when we mix it with business. The relationship between the Church and political power can also be corrupted if common good is not the only converging point.

Authority and power are two different things: power is the force by means of which you can oblige others to obey you. Authority is the right to direct and command, to be listened to or obeyed by others. Authority requests power. Power without authority is tyranny.

In Egypt the neoliberal programs have meant statistical growth, like right before the Arab Spring, Egypt was a kind of poster child for the World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund:] the marvelous economic management and great reform. The only problem was for most of the population it was a kind of like a blow in the solar plexus: wages going down, benefits being eliminated, subsidized food gone and meanwhile, high concentration of wealth and a huge amount of corruption.

Despite the insanity of using whether you would want to have a beer with someone as a legitimate reason for voting for or against them, I always felt that is indicative of a massive problem in politics: It matters as much what your personality is as how smart you are or how good you are at your job. That is a huge, huge problem. A lot of people who are very smart or very good at their jobs are not people I would want to ever have a beer with - but I would want them making massive policy decisions with huge implications for the future of the planet.

If, for example, one day Ki Bagoes Hadikoesoemo becomes the Indonesian Head of State, and dies, won't his child be [his replacement]? Then because of that I do not adhere to the principle of monarchism.

The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.

Congress should ban advertising that preys upon children, it should stop subsidizing dead-end jobs, it should pass tougher food safety laws, it should protect American workers from serious harm, it should fight against dangerous concentrations of economic power.

States are doomed when they are unable to distinguish good men from bad.

My job is not to show my children that I'm the man, but to show them that Christ is the man.

You, me...we own this country. Politicians are employees of ours....And when somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.

The administration of government lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence.

Putin doesn't conduct elections in the Western sense of elections. This is more accurately probably described as a plebiscite, where people are supposed to express their support for him. The Russian system is not unique in this respect, but it is rather interesting. Here, in the West, the impression that people have is that Putin runs the whole country. This is not so, at all. To a certain extent, you could say that he runs the Kremlin, and this means that it's, in some situations, hard to tell whether it's him running the Kremlin, or the people around him running him.

I think it's very humble to believe that there is no man, woman or child who should live in tyranny. That people who say, well, maybe Arabs just aren't ready for democracy or maybe Africans just are going to have corrupt governments, that seems to me arrogant.

No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.

The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever being one.