Ruling Quotes - Page 8

• Oh, by the way…” Jason glanced at Percy. “I resigned my office, gave Frank a field promotion to praetor. Unless you want to contest that ruling.” Percy grinned. “No argument here.” “Praetor?” Hazel stared at Frank. He shrugged uncomfortably. “Well… yeah. I know it seems weird.” She tried to throw her arms around him, then winced as she remembered her busted ribs. She settled for kissing him. “It seems perfect.” Leo clapped Frank on the shoulder. “Way to go, Zhang. Now you can order Octavian to fall on his sword.

  Rick Riordan

  Fall, Kissing, Order

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• Loyalty is an asset, independent and scarce, parceled out among different contestants for power. No ruling government or nonruling group enjoys absolute loyalty - no contestant can have the whole pie.

  Yossi Shain

  Loyalty, Independent, Government

  Yossi Shain (2010). “The Frontier of Loyalty: Political Exiles in the Age of the Nation-State”, p.18, University of Michigan Press

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• Commercial interests with their advertising industry do not want people to develop contentment and less greed. Military interests in economic, political, ethnic or nationalist guises, do not want people to develop more tolerance, nonviolence and compassion. And ruling groups in general, in whatever sort of hierarchy do not want the ruled to become too insightful, too independent, too creative on their own, as the danger is that they will become insubordinate, rebellious, and unproductive in their alloted tasks.

  Robert Thurman

  Military, Creativity, Independent

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• They knew bullshit, and they knew about the ruling class; dying for a ruling class cause was almost always bullshit.

  William Kittredge

  Class, Bullshit, Dying

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• In India, as we saw, the Sepoy Mutiny led to a vast reorganization of British colonialism in the area, sending out a viceroy from London and before too long, Queen Victoria was proclaimed “Empress of India,” with this great empire, ruling over maharajahs and other local potentates.

  Webster Tarpley

  Queens, Long, Mutiny

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• On the much revered family of North American mythology - and a metaphor for the Ruling Alliance:
  Sacred family! .... The supposed home of all the virtues, where innocent children are tortured into their first falsehoods, where wills are broken by parental tyranny, and self-respect smothered by crowded, jostling egos.

  August Strindberg

  Children, Home, Self

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• The police have no right to do what they have been doing to the protesters. Their behavior has been designed to chill the protester's constitutional rights. This judge's ruling is wonderful.

  James Lafferty

  Rights, Judging, Police

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• I am not a capitalist soldier; I am a proletarian revolutionist. I do not belong to the regular army of the plutocracy, but to the irregular army of the people. I refuse to obey any command to fight from the ruling class, but I will not wait to be commanded to fight for the working class. I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world-wide war of social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.

  Eugene V. Debs

  War, Heart, Fighting

  "In What War Shall I Take Up Arms and Fight?" by Eugene V. Debs, www.marxists.org. September 1915.

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• In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence.

  Socrates

  Motivational, Two, Excellence

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• The newspapers are the ruling power. Any other government is reduced to a few marines at Fort Independence. If a man neglects to read the Daily Times, government will go down on its knees to him, for this is the only treason these days.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Marine, Men, Independence

  Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.89, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Those who formally rule take their signals and commands not from the electorate as a body, but from a small group of men. This group will be called the Establishment. It exists even though that existence is stoutly denied. It is one of the secrets of the American social order... A second secret is the fact that the existence of the Establishment - the ruling class - is not supposed to be discussed.

  Arthur Miller

  Men, Command Not, Order

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• The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.

  Karl Marx

  Mean, Expression, Class

  Karl Marx, Frederick Engels (2005). “The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document”, p.16, Haymarket Books

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• Back in pre-Revolutionary America cruel and unusual punishment meant the rack and burning at the stake... in more recent rulings it has been taken to mean the absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just overcrowding in the prisons.

  Tom Clancy

  Sex, Taken, Mean

  "Executive Orders". Book by Tom Clancy, p. 613, 1996.

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• Freud was way off base in considering sex the fundamental motivation. The ruling passion in men is minding each other's business.

  Robert Frost

  Sex, Motivation, Passion

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• I am bound by the laws of the United States and all 50 states...I am not bound by any case or any court to which I myself am not a party...I don't think the Congress of the United States is subservient to the courts...They can ignore a Supreme Court ruling if they so choose.

  Pat Robertson

  Party, Thinking, Law

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• Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes).

  Vladimir Lenin

  Independent, Curves, Class

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• Let me arrest thy thoughts, wonder with me,
  Why ploughing, building, ruling and the rest,
  Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blessed,
  By cursed Cain's race invented be,
  And blessed Seth vexed us with astronomy.

  John Donne

  Art, Science, Race

  "John Donne: The Major Works".

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• Well, let's see. There's -- of course -- in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings.

  Sarah Palin

  America, Roe V Wade, Great History

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• We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.

  Tony Judt

  Political, Answers, World

  Tony Judt (2010). “Ill Fares the Land”, p.11, Penguin

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• To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament-this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary- constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Crush, Real, Years

  Vladimir Lenin (2017). “The State And Revolution (Annotated)”, p.55, Lulu Press, Inc

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• But you have nothing better to do with your time than harass us, do you? Go back to ruling the universe from Mount Olympus or whatever else it is you mongrels do.

  Claudia Gray

  Olympus, Universe

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• Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.

  Isaac Asimov

  Law, Class, Desire

  Isaac Asimov (1986). “Foundation Trilogy”, Del Rey

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• Be known for pleasing others, especially if you govern them. Ruling other has one advantage: you can do more good than anyone else.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Inspirational, Pleasing Others, Advantage

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• Those who take the most from the table, teach contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined, demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry, of wonderful times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss, call ruling difficult, for ordinary folk.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Country, Sacrifice, Contentment

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• I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.

  George Eliot

  Heaven, Public Opinion, Belief

  Robert Coles, George Eliot, George Orwell, Leo Tolstoy, Anthony Trollope (2007). “Political Leadership: Stories of Power and Politics from Literature and Life”, p.31, Modern Library

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