Livy Quotes
When Tarquin the Proud was asked what was the best mode of governing a conquered city, he replied only by beating down with his staff all the tallest poppies in his garden.
Livy. The History of Rome. Translated by Rev. Canon Roberts, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1912, Book 1, Ch. 54.
Belafonte was on stage with Hugo Chavez, the autocratic president of Venezuela and a patent demagogue who constantly attacked Bush and the American government. Other than an entertainer who knows little about politics making an over the top attack on the president this quotation is ironic because he was at the time on the stage with and supporting one of the two most autocratic dictators of the Western Hemisphere—Hugo Chavez. In that context, the accusation was as absurd as it can get.
The Flemmish city of Ghent needed a Governor. Du Bois approached Philip Van Artevelde whose father had been a successful governor to see if he would be interested in assuming the office. Many cities, while not democracies, did elect their ruler as for a time was done on Ancient Rome. This quotation is interesting in that Du Bois, a kingmaker politician, shows us what qualifications were perceived necessary for a Governor of a major city.
Bhutto, after Pakistan’s defeat by India, initiated a massive nuclear bomb development program which was contrary to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation policy of the United States. Bhutto went ahead anyway and soon Pakistan had a nuclear capability, much to the distress of the other nuclear powers in the world.
At the time of this statement most people thought that Bush was joking. But by the end of his Presidency many looked back on the quote and thought that Bush had such preferences. He unilaterally took the country into the Iraq War and assumed Presidential Powers that no other president had ever attempted. Most serious, his administration actually took the formal legal position that the President did not have to obey the law if he unilaterally thought that it was not in the nation’s interest from the point of view of the Commander in Chief. So many debate whether this quotation was a light hearted joke of a harbinger of his real feelings about the Presidency.
Titus Livius (/ˈlɪviəs/ LIV-ee-əs, Latin: [ˈtɪtʊs ˈliːwijʊs]; 64/59 BC – AD 12/17), known as Livy (/ˈlɪvi/ LIV-ee) in English, was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled Ab Urbe Condita, ''From the Founding of the City'', covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional foundation in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own lifetime. He was on familiar terms with members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and even in friendship with Augustus, whose young grandnephew, the future emperor Claudius, he exhorted to take up the writing of history.
