Statesmen Quotes - Page 4

There is one statesman of the present day, of whom I always say that he would have escaped making the blunders that he has made if he had only ridden more in buses.

Arthur Helps

Made, Blunders, Bus

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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wall, Thinking, Consistency

Essays "Self-Reliance" (1841)

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It is certain that the greatest poets, orators, statesmen, and historians, men of the most brilliant and imposing talents, have labored as hard, if not harder, than day laborers; and that the most obvious reason why they have been superior to other men is that they have taken more pains than other men.

Orison Swett Marden

Pain, Taken, Men

Orison Swett Marden (1907). “The Optimistic Life”

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A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint, will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy. - Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant; accommodates itself to the meanest capacities; silences the loud and clamorous, and cringes over the most obstinate and inflexible. - Philip of Macedon was a man of most invincible reason this way. He refuted by it all the wisdom of Athens; confounded their statesmen; struck their orators dumb; and at length argued them out of all their liberties.

Joseph Addison

Wisdom, Philosophy, Men

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MULTITUDE, n. A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue. In a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration.

Ambrose Bierce

Wisdom, Political, Crowds

Ambrose Bierce, S. T. Joshi, David E. Schultz (2000). “The Fall of the Republic and Other Political Satires”, p.223, Univ. of Tennessee Press

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History is no longer just a chronicle of kings and statesmen, of people who wielded power, but of ordinary women and men engaged in manifold tasks. Women's history is an assertion that women have a history.

Toshiko Kishida

Kings, Men, People

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No nation went into oblivion or was destroyed because it had bad laws, or because its statesmen were not intelligent, but because of INTERNAL CORRUPTION, and because they could not maintain the POWER OF SELF-CONTROL.

Melvin J. Ballard

Intelligent, Self, Law

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With calm, knowledgeable precision, Daniel Ziblatt wades into the adjacent swamps of federalism and nineteenth-century European history, emerging with hands full of gems. Beneath the tangle of great statesmen and national culture he discovers conflicting regional political interests, sharp regional variations in political capacity, fearful defenses against excessive democracy, coercive conquest of weak states, and unintended consequences galore. Read, think, and learn.

Charles Tilly

Thinking, Hands, Political

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It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

G. H. Hardy

Appreciation, Art, Writing

G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.61, Cambridge University Press

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You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.

Wendell Phillips

Given, Presidency, Seventies

Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.309

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A statesman is any politician it's considered safe to name a school after.

Bill Vaughan

School, Names, Political

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Change from below, the formulation of demands from the populace to end unacceptable injustice, supported by direct action, has played a far larger part in shaping British democracy than most constitutional lawyers, political commentators, historians or statesmen have ever cared to admit. Direct action in a democratic society is fundamentally an educational exercise.

Tony Benn

Educational, Exercise, Direct Action

"New Politics" Magazine, 1970.

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Whether at home or abroad, the task of statesman is to work with human nature warts and all, and to draw on instincts and even prejudices that can be turned to good purpose. It is never to try to recreate Mankind in a new image.

Margaret Thatcher

Home, Trying, Prejudice

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How many physicians, scientists, teachers, pastors, missionaries, statesmen, musicians, businessmen, and notable contributors to society have been murdered in the womb?

Chuck Baldwin

Teacher, Musician, Physicians

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And when statesmen or others worry him [the scientist] too much, then he should leave with his possessions. With a firm and steadfast mind one should hold under all conditions, that everywhere the earth is below and the sky above and to the energetic man, every region is his fatherland.

Tycho Brahe

Science, Men, Sky

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An astronomer must be cosmopolitan, because ignorant statesmen cannot be expected to value their services

Tycho Brahe

Ignorant, Astronomers, Expected

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Do you suppose a woman knows why she loves? Does she select? Does she say to herself, 'Go to! here is a distinguished statesman with presidential possibilities; I shall proceed to fall in love with him.' or, 'I shall set my heart upon this musician, whose fame is on every tongue?' or 'this financier, who controls the world's money markets?'

Kate Chopin

Falling In Love, Heart, Presidential

Kate Chopin (2013). “The Awakening: And Selected Short Stories - Beyond the Bayou, Ma'ame Pelagie, Desiree's Baby, Respectable Woman, Kiss, Pair of Silk Stockings, Locket, Reflection (Beloved Books Edition)”, p.115, Lulu Press, Inc

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The principle of laissez-faire may be safely trusted to in some things but in many more it is wholly inapplicable; and to appeal to it on all occasions savors more of the policy of a parrot than of a statesman or a philosopher.

John Ramsay McCulloch

Principles, May, Libertarian

"The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain". Book by Roderick Floud, Volume 1. p. 363, 2014.

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In order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets. [...] The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question.

Cecil Rhodes

Country, War, Order

"Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism". Essay by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, www.marxists.org. 1917.

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It is not necessary for the politician to be the slave of the public's group prejudices, if he can learn how to mold the mind of the voters in conformity with his own ideas of public welfare and public service. The important thing for the statesman of our age is not so much to know how to please the public, but to know how to sway the public. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

Edward Bernays

Country, Government, Ideas

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Now that Mandela has been released from prison we can all admit what has been apparent, that he is not a Tembu tribesman, in fact he is not an African at all. He is quite obviously Chinese. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it makes those who persist in seeing him as a great African statesman look rather foolish.

Auberon Waugh

Chinese, Looks, Facts

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A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

Will Durant

Moralist

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The statesman's task is to hear God's footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to His coattails as He marches past.

Otto von Bismarck

Past, Trying, Tasks

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I have sometimes dreamt ... that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards -- their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble -- the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.

Virginia Woolf

Book, Reading, Names

Virginia Woolf (1972). “Collected essays”

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The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation are, — 1. Security to possessors; 2. Facility to acquirers; and 3. Hope to all.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Government, Two, Three

"The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions".

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