Mencius Quotes

A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.

We can't do without government, but we do need it to be more effective.

A decent government with an effective, but not gratuitously violent, police force and a fair court system are essential. This deters and incapacitates psychopaths, bullies and hotheads - and if it earns the confidence of the people, they don't have to become violent in self-defence.

The policies and the laws are no better than the people who are enforcing them.

The question of our time is rapidly becoming can government get things done?

You can’t govern a country on charisma.

The ruler who possesses methods of government does not follow the good that happens by chance but practices according to necessary principles. Law, methods, and power must be employed for government: these constitute its 'necessary principles.'

If Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters.

Governing a large state is like boiling a small fish.

Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.

The importance of the Bible to a church is to keep the church on track. The role of the Constitution in government is to keep the government on track.

Politics is a fascinating game, because politics is government. It is the art of government.

There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.

No form of government matters nearly as much as the spirit and intelligence brought to the administration of any form of government.

Most of the problems of government come from people being overwhelmed by the size and scale of what they have to do.

The Australian people expect the Government to govern, they don't expect it to make excuses.

Experience has shown that it is difficult, if not impossible, for a populous state to be run by good laws.

There's a lot of things that I think you got to deal with. Hillary Clinton had to put down a rebellion in her own party, then she's going to have to put down the [Donald] Trump rebellion and then try to govern.

The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it.

To form a new Government, requires infinite care, and unbounded attention; for if the foundation is badly laid the superstructure must be bad.

The wonder is not that the world is so easily governed, but that so small a number of persons will suffice for the purpose. There are dead weights in political and legislative bodies as in clocks, and hundreds answer as pulleys who would never do for politicians.

It is acknowledged, namely, that there are in the world three forms of government, autocracy, oligarchy, and democracy: autocracies and oligarchies are administered according to the tempers of their lords, but democratic states according to established laws.

Government doesn't work. That's the first lesson we must learn if we want to improve society.

Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority.

My message is simple - freedom works a lot better than the authoritarian style of government.