Political Governance Quotes

Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.

Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards.

The media are not progressive enough to let us govern. 24/7 news is the worst thing that has happened to the ability to govern.

No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.

I actually don't believe in governance by referendum. I believe that we have a democracy, that we elect people to make decisions.

As a matter of fact and experience, the more power is divided the more irresponsible it becomes.

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.

Allah guards the justice loving government, even if it is the government of non-Muslims, and destroys the tyrant government, even if it is the government of Muslims.

How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?

[Commenting on negative campaigning:] On the eve of the first Tuesday in November, once again we are faced with the ugly paradox of 30-second-spot democracy: to prove they are worthy of governing us in all that we hold dear, America's politicians must behave in a way that proves they aren't.

I'm not really much into politics, because it's rarely discussed in my line of work, but I know that Barack Obama is trying his best, and that at some point down the road, he's going to get it right.

All government is an ugly necessity.

I think that liberalism and the centrist governing elite of this country need to learn lessons from the Trump phenomenon. It is part of the way that the country is governed and the country is shaped that induces spasms of populism, including spasms of bigoted populism.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

Painfully often the legislation our politicians pass is designed less to solve problems than to protect the politicians from defeat in our never-ending election campaigns. They are … too frightened of us to govern.

The American presidency combines elements of the efficient and the dignified. The president presides over governance - not making legislation but proposing it, cajoling the co-equal federal legislature and then signing and executing the laws.

I have not had the cabinet here for 6 weeks. I can run the government better without them.

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

It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.

Politics, as any observer of the modern world knows, is the enemy of economics, everywhere and always.

God has no role to play in politics except to make sure politicians go where they belong. To hell.

From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation.

Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions.

I think there’s more of a tendency now than in the past to avoid discussion of serious problems. It has a pernicious effect on our politics and on governing, because to govern, you need a mandate. And you don’t get a mandate if you don’t say what you’re going to do.

It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.