Ideal Governance Quotes

We have no parties or politicians, and as for demagoguery and corruption, they are words having only an historical significance…

There is still a tendency to regard any existing government intervention as desirable, to attribute all evils to the market, and to evaluate new proposals for government control in their ideal form, as they might work if run by able, disinterested men free from the pressure of special interest groups.

I do wish I ruled the world, I think it'd be a better place.

A monarchy conducted with infinite wisdom and infinite benevolence is the most perfect of all possible governments.

If mankind were to resolve to agree in no institution of government, until every part of it had been adjusted to the most exact standard of perfection, society would soon become a general scene of anarchy, and the world a desert.

In the world there is no democracy better than our democracy. Such a thing has never before been seen.

Ideal legislators do not vote their interests.

And where are you going to get these angels who are going to run society for us?

The need for Government is the need for force; where force is unnecessary, there is no need for Government.

The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature — a type nowhere at present existing

I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor.

To discover the rules of society that are best suited to nations, there would need to exist a superior intelligence, who could understand the passions of men without feeling any of them, who had no affinity with our nature but knew it to the full, whose happiness was independent of ours, but who would nevertheless make our happiness his concern, who would be content to wait in the fullness of time for a distant glory, and to labour in one age to enjoy the fruits in another. Gods would be needed to give men laws.

It's the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.