Rulers Quotes

“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty?”
― Patrick Henry

“Antarctica. You know, that giant continent at the bottom of the earth that’s ruled by penguins and seals.”
― C.B. Cook, Twinepathy

“The truth is, one who seeks to achieve freedom by petitioning those in power to give it to him has already failed, regardless of the response.
To beg for the blessing of “authority” is to accept that the choice is the master’s alone to make, which means that the person is already, by definition, a slave.”
― Larken Rose

“ In the privacy of my dreams, I'm a warrior.”
― Kimberly Derting, The Essence

“Some legislators only wish to vengeance against a particular enemy. Others only look out for themselves. They devote very little time on the consideration of any public issue. They think that no harm will come from their neglect. They act as if it is always the business of somebody else to look after this or that. When this selfish notion is entertained by all, the commonwealth slowly begins to decay. ”
― Thucydides

“If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse.

And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humoured these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Because a man plays a king superbly well does not mean that he would make a good king.”
― Louis L'Amour, Comstock Lode

“...which animal the ruler should impersonate depends strongly on what animals the followers are.”
― Geert Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind

“You sanctimonious philistines, who scoff at me!
What has your politics fed on
since you've been ruling the world?
On butchery and murder!”
― Charles de Coster, The Legend of the Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegel in the Land of Flanders & Elsewhere

“We have not to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule; rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he can’t.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“People like me, we’re ants, and rulers are just a big foot looming over us ready to squish us into the dirt. Doesn’t matter whose body the foot is attached to, the purpose is still the same.”
― Maya Motayne, Nocturna

“A place where soldiers found themselves as rulers, Shakuni thought, can only breed tyrants.”
― Gourav Mohanty, Sons of Darkness

“What must we do to protect ourselves and our children? What can we do to regain our stolen nation?"

Nasty. Very nasty. Jarret was the junior senator from Texas when he preached the sermon that contained those lnes. He never answered the questions he asked. He left that to his listeners. And yet he says he's against the witch burnings.

His speeches during the campaign have been somewhat less inflammatory than his sermons. He's had to distance himself from the worst of his followers. But he still knows how to rouse his rabble, how to reach out to poor people, and sic them on other poor people. How much of this nonsense does he believe, I wonder, and how much does he say just because he knows the value of dividing in order to conquer and to rule?

Well, now he's conquered. In January of next year, he'll be sworn in, and he'll rule. Then, I suppose we'll see just how much of his own propaganda he believes.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

“When a ruler gives up on empathy and sentiment, it is a sign of desperation. It means they’re paring away emotion in favor of efficiency and numbers and a twisted fantasy of a better life without the joys and burdens of caring about something outside of themselves. Contempt for kindness and generosity is the surest sign there is that someone has nothing else left to them but a horrible emptiness much worse than weakness. It’s an—anti-strength. And the dying monster plods along, unaware it’s rotting.”
― Mercedes Lackey, Beyond

“Rulers craft stories, the ruled listen.”
― Amogh Swamy, On My Way To Infinity: A Seeker's Poetic Pilgrimage

“صحيح أن الحرية يكرهها أكثر الحكام ورجال الدين .. ولكن لابد من قدر كبير منها ليكون هناك حكم ودين”
― أنيس منصور, في السياسة الجزء الثاني

“If you study history, in almost any time, there has always been conquests and subjugation of people or plans thereof. Simply because it remains the most trusted way of securing ones own continued existance in freedom while retaining or gaining a higher standard of living. Thus, if you cannot find a trace of such activity either from your own, or from another, there is peace. Or is there? Question everything.”
― Monaristw

“But if the thing is criminal, if, for instance, it is a license to commit adultery, the person who authorises the act shares the guilt of the person who commits it.”
― Lord Acton, Lectures on Modern history

“Rulers define the proper, and the world of duality eventually sieves out the improper.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Most people are robots-executors, not very much unlike animals. They are not even aware of the true motives of their behavior. They make the majority among simples, and among vors, and among outs. On the other hand, there is a minority, robots-rulers, who are aware of themselves, of the motives of their actions, and are able to control them to a certain extent. This is the only real freedom available to people.”
― Andrew Orange, The Outside Intervention

“We will not get real freedom as a concession from rulers. We will have to win real freedom for ourselves.”
― Roy San Filippo, A New World In Our Hearts: 8 Years of Writings from the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation

“You think too highly of people, Richard.” Mr. Martian gave a mournful smile. “Probably, you judge by yourself. The rulers of the so-called ‘developed countries’ are cowardly scum and fools who educate their population accordingly. Their ancestors won freedom, and they’ve flushed it down the outhouse. They won’t fight. This is degradation, which is now commonly called ‘progress.”
― Andrew Orange, The Secrets of Mars

“The anti-military spirit which is developing among the masses of Europe will tell the governments of the Earth that the workers have no trouble that needs to be settled by cruel war; and if the rulers have trouble, they can settle them by fighting it out among themselves. The working class wants to enjoy the fruits of their toil, the short time they journey this Earth. But we are told that kind of talk is unpatriotic, that every man ought to be willing to fight for his country. What country belongs to the wage class?”
― Lucy Parsons

“Gradually, human societies started extricating themselves from the worst forms of oppression. Human sacrifice and deified rulers went out of fashion. Slavery was outlawed, and privileges were taken away from nobles. Human societies regained much of the lost ground. We are still not as egalitarian as hunter-gatherers --there are the poor and the billionaires-- but we are much better off than we were during the days of god-kings.”
― Peter Turchin, Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth

“When people have rejected aristocracy, no longer believe that leadership is inherited at birth, no longer assume that the ruling class is endorsed by God, the argument about who gets to rule--who is the elite--is never over. For a long time, some people in Europe and North America settled on the idea that various forms of democratic, meritocratic, and economic competition are the fairest alternative to inherited or ordained power. But even in countries that were never occupied by the Red Army and never ruled by Latin American populists, democracy and free markets can produce unsatisfying outcomes, especially when badly regulated, or when nobody trusts the regulators, or when people are entering the contest from very different starting points. The losers of these competitions were always, sooner or later, going to challenge the value of the competition itself.”
― Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

“When there is righteous rulers, the people rejoices.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Once my father said that conflicts are between rulers. Those that follow rulers can be perfectly nice, which is how you wind up with two perfectly nice people with daggers to each other's throats. Hyacinthe and I might have been friends, but for the part where we were set on opposite sides of a battlefield.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“An alien principle took charge when men began administering nature. When priestesses whose moon-based calendar foretold the cycles with minute precision gave way to priests in women’s robes who reckoned by the sun, & left each year awry with one fourth of a useless day.”
― Ursule Molinaro, The Autobiography of Cassandra, Princess & Prophetess of Troy

“The rulers of ill-governed countries have hands, mouths, feet, stomachs, ears, livers, kidneys! But there is something very vital that they do not have: The brain! If they had that, they could run their country well!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan