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"A minister's (cabinet member's) function was not to DO the work but to see that it got done."
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Exlpore more Governance quotes
"Leaders who do not help the people must be replaced by the people."
"The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop."
"Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich."
"They sit in their soundproof rooms and issue tone-deaf edicts and call themselves controlling the world. And one day they ask you to die for them."
"A silver-tongued charlatan and a half-wit society are made for each other! When these two come together in an election, a great disaster happens: Charlatan comes to power!"
"Every word of etatistic thought is contradicted by the doctrines of sociology and economics; this is why etatists endeavour to prove that these sciences do not exist. In their opinion, social affairs are shaped by the State. To the law, all things are possible; and there is no sphere in which State intervention is not omnipotent."
"Politics should be a field that attracts statesmen, not future CEO's and board members."
"Most people don't realize, I really have no faith in politics. I'm not a politician. If I thought you could change human hearts by laws, I would, but I don't."
"The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart."
"A statesman who is enamored of existing evils as distin-quished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others."
Explore more quotes by Barbara Tuchman
"To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost."
"Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism."
"Between the happening of a historical process and its recognition by rulers, a lag stretches, full of pitfalls."
"How much does a man's effort depend upon the age in which his work is cast? Pope Clement VII."
"I will only mention that the independent power of words to affect the writing of history is a thing to be watched out for. They have an almost frightening autonomous power to produce in the mind of the reader an image or idea that was not in the mind of the writer. Obviously they operate this way in all forms of writing, but history is particularly sensitive because one has a duty to be accurate, and careless use of words can leave a false impression one had not intended."
"No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision."
"The process of gaining power employs means which degrade or brutalize the seeker, who awakes to find that power has been possessed at the cost of virtue or moral purpose lost."
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