Governing Quotes - Page 5

• There is no Senate rule governing the proper uses of the filibuster.

  Tony Snow

  Use, Filibuster, Senate

  "The Head-in-the-Toilet Test", www.foxnews.com. May 19, 2005.

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• We love the blather and boast, the charge and counter-charge of campaigning. Governing is a tougher deal.

  Hugh Sidey

  Politics, Blather, Deals

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• It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil. It behooves the well-intentioned, therefore, vigorously to watch the tendency of even their most highly prized institutions, since that which was established in the interests of the right, may so easily become the agent of the wrong.

  James F. Cooper

  Integrity, Agency, Evil

  "The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Book by James F. Cooper (Conclusion, p. 191), 1838.

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• Ministers must not be able to set rules governing solicitors on a whim, to suit their own requirements.

  Kevin Martin

  Requirements, Able, Suits

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• We have arrived at the point where the public are right in thinking that John Prescott no longer serves a purpose in governing the country, only a purpose in trying to hold together the fragile peace in the Labour Party

  Andrew Lansley

  Country, Party, Thinking

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• As self-governing entities, artists have a profound interest in change. Embracing change, we embrace growth and we embrace our future.

  Robert Genn

  Change, Artist, Self

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• Fiscal responsibility and government reform are going to be good themes for governing, well at any time, but particularly coming out of a recovery.

  Bob McDonnell

  Recovery, Responsibility, Government

  "POLITICO's interview with Bob McDonnell". Interview with Andy Barr, www.politico.com. February 7, 2011.

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• The poor Constitution itself is hardly paid any attention to. It's necessary to ignore it because most of what government does these days is clearly unconstitutional. The original idea, as expressed by James Madison, was that states would do 95 percent of the governing. Today, they are little more than administrative subdivisions of the central empire.

  Charley Reese

  Government, Ideas, Doe

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• Both of our political parties, at least the honest portion of them, agree conscientiously in the same object: the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers, the other by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Party, Believe, Ignorance

  B. L. Rayner, Thomas Jefferson (1834). “Life of Thomas Jefferson: with selections from the most valuable portions of his voluminious and unrivalled private correspondence : with portrait”, p.386

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• In reality the workings of your governing system are opaque and covert, while hiding in the chattering spotlight of an ostensible transparency, even though the ultimate objective is clear.

  Breyten Breytenbach

  Reality, Spotlight, Opaque

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• The Church, however, is a self-governing society, distinct from the State, having its officers and laws, and, therefore, an administrative government of its own.

  Charles Hodge

  Government, Self, Law

  Charles Hodge (1855). “What is Presbyterianism?: An Address Delivered Before the Presbyterian Historical Society at Their Anniversary Meeting in Philadelphia, on Tuesday Evening, May 1, 1855”, p.7

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• It's not the people in the South who create racial problems - it's the people who are governing.

  Nat King Cole

  People, Problem, South

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• It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil.

  James F. Cooper

  Agency, Evil, Principles

  "The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Book by James F. Cooper (Conclusion, p. 191), 1838.

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• Governing isn't as easy as you think. Many of you have taken pledges that are contradictory - to balance the budget and cut taxes, for example. You must be honest about the numbers, since our annual deficit now exceeds all discretionary spending combined.

  Brian Baird

  Taken, Cutting, Thinking

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• It is already clear that, because of advances in technology, drones are going to play an increased role in warfare in the years ahead. It is therefore vital that the legal frameworks governing their use are robust and internationally recognised.

  Douglas Alexander

  Technology, Years, Play

  "Iraq war did more harm than good, says Douglas Alexander". Interview with Andrew Sparrow, www.theguardian.com. February 14, 2013.

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• The issue for us is rebuilding a governing majority that is comfortable with differences that can transcend the divisiveness and unify behind the principles that we know our party has succeeded on.

  Eric Cantor

  Party, Differences, Issues

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• I believe that the far-right and the far-left can be equally insane - but there's no question that in the first years of the Obama administration, the far-right has been far crazier. In part, this comes from parties being out of power - without the responsibility of governing to ground them, the activists and the ideologues take over.

  John Avlon

  Party, Believe, Responsibility

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• The great art of governing consists in not letting men grow old in their jobs.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Art, Jobs, Power

  Letter to Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot, (August 9, 1796); in "Correspondance de Napoléon Ier", Vol. 1, (p. 532), 1858.

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• In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Loss, Class, Government

  Theodore Roosevelt (1904). “Addresses and Presidential Messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904”

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• God should be the object of all our desires, the end of all our actions, the principle of all our affections, and the governing power of our whole souls.

  Jean Baptiste Massillon

  God, Soul, Desire

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 257, 1895.

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• The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.

  Jurgen Habermas

  People, Together, May

  "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)". Book by Jurgen Habermas translated by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence, 1989.

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• Slavery was a central concern of governance form the time of the first nation-state. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest know set of laws for governing an empire, prescribed death for anyone who harbored a fugitive or otherwise helped a slave to escape. The relationship between the law and bondage goes back even farther: Indeed, the oldest extant legal documents don't concern the sale of land, houses, or even animals, but slaves.

  Derrick Jensen

  Animal, Law, Land

  Derrick Jensen (2004). “The Culture of Make Believe”, p.60, Chelsea Green Publishing

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• How can a governing party propose to its people a referendum that won't be binding? Is that a serious political programme? No it is not. It's the final option that will end up with upset, at a dead end, reflecting the last 4 years of the Ibarretxe Plan.

  Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

  Party, Years, People

  Regarding Juan José Ibarretxe's plan to propose a referendum regarding whether to approve his plan to reform the aunomomy of the Basque Country, El Correo, (p. 23), April 9, 2005.

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• The formation in geological time of the human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field is as unlikely as the separation of the atmosphere into its components. The complexity of the living things has to be present within the material, from which they are derived, or in the laws, governing their formation.

  Kurt Gödel

  Law, Atmosphere, Body

  "Nature's Imagination". Book by J. Cornwall, p.161-189, 1995.

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• The corporatist-economic model of society appears to be governing us. Economists, often in the pay of transnationals, are deciding, for us, what democracy is, and will be.

  B. W. Powe

  Economic Models, Democracy, Pay

  "Towards a Canada of Light". Book by B. W. Powe, 2006.

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