Governance Quotes

Most of the inhabitants of India do not mind how India is governed. Nor are the lower animals of England concerned about England, but in the tropics the indifference is more prominent, the inarticulate world is closer at hand and readier to resume control as soon as men are tired.

Metaphorically, governance is like a “Steer,” Risk Management is like a “Brake.

Pearl Zhu

There is a difference between needy and helpless. While doling out free benefits to the needy is condemnable, the helpless must be assisted to get their lives back on track. No one should be living in fear or under oppressive conditions.

A focused Board concentrates on strategy oversight and governance practices, to avoid getting lost in the forest.

Pearl Zhu

Generally speaking, the key dimensions of corporate governance are strategy oversight, policy making, accountability, and monitoring.

Pearl Zhu

A high degree of autonomy is what permits innovation, experimentation and risk taking in a bureaucracy. If the slightest mistake can end a career, then no one will ever take risks.

Francis Fukuyama

Innovation is a mindset, and that’s where governance comes in.

Pearl Zhu

Ignore the voice that scorns and ridicules to ensure it does not mold you. Stifling subtleties like these, if unchecked, are oppressive. Freedom is a love supreme birthright, not a privilege to be governed by any other.

Adapt and adopt the peer-to-peer and open source models to wider implementation in organisations

Miguel Reynolds Brandao

CEOs should be measured by the value they create into the community, the shareholders and the members of the company.

Miguel Reynolds Brandao

Your worst enemy is not the person in opposition to you. It is the person occupying the spot you would be fighting from and doing nothing.

While mistakes may be local, in today’s connected world embarrassment is global

Excerpt from page 113[On Malaysia's Prime Minster's anti-capitalism and anti-globalization policies in September 1997] "Ah, excuse me, Mahathir, but what planet are you living on? You talk about participating in globalization as if it were a choice you had. Globalization isn't a choice. It's a reality. There is just one global market today, and the only way you can grown at the speed your people want to grow is by tapping into the global stock and bond markets, by seeking out multinationals to invest in your country and by selling into the global trading systems what your factories produce. And the most basic truth about globalization is: No one is in charge. You keep looking for someone to complain to, someone to take the heat off your markets, someone to blame. Well, guess what, Mahathir, there's no one on the other end of the phone!""The Electronic Heard cuts no one any slack... The herd is not infallible. It makes mistakes too. It overreacts and it overshoots. But if your fundamentals are basically sound, the herd will eventually recognize this and come back. They herd is never stupid for too long. In the end, it always responds to good governance and good economic management.

Thomas L. Friedman

DAD (Decide-Announce-Defend) remains the order of the day, with only a few inspiring models of EDD (Engage-Deliberate-Decide) available to us to demonstrate how very different things could be.

Johnathon Porritt

when the democrats choose not to be democratic, democracy fails to be democratic.

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The great Bonaventure said that the wise must enhance conceptual clarity with the truth implicit in the actions of the simple....""Like the chapter of Perugia and the learned memories of Ubertino, which transform into theological decisions the summons of the simple to poverty." I said."Yes, but as you have seen, this happens too late, and when it happens, the truth of the simple has already been transformed into the truth of the powerful, more useful for the Emperor Louis than for a Friar of the Poor Life.

We are in a prison of our own minds holding our own chains around us. We create our oligarchs and fight for their right to oppress us.

Bill C-9 was supposed to be a budget bill, but it came with innumerable measures that had little or nothing to do with the nation's finances. It was, as critics put it, the advance of the Harper agenda by stealth, yet another abuse of the democratic process. The bill was a behemoth. It was 904 pages, with 23 separate sections and 2,208 individual clauses....As a Reform MP, [Stephen Harper] .... said of one piece of legislation that 'the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.' The bill he referred to was 21 page long -- or 883 pages shorter than the one he was now putting before Parliament.

Lawrence Martin

There are seemingly parallel origins of Nature’s God in America and China’s Mandate of Heaven. These twin concepts created socio-political forces for public good and orderly governance, and a unique cultural ethos (related to the Creator of the Universe in America and the Son of Heaven in China) is deeply rooted in both societies. Each concept is physically yet stealthily manifested in the architectural designs of the two capital cities, Beijing and Washington.

What do you want to be, free or happy? How about if they really are mutually exclusive options? What is freedom anyway? How does humanity govern itself when each person can have anything they want? How does humanity govern itself when nothing is natural?

Jo Walton

Monitor, transparently, and enforce the separation of Democracy powers: Legislative; Executive; Judicial

Miguel Reynolds Brandao

In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

Thomas Jefferson

Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.

All governments, even these precious “democracies,” derive all their power by force. Do something the government doesn’t want, like, say, cross the street against the light, refuse to submit to its authority, and it won’t be long before they’ll use some form of force, usually a weapon and the threat of death or injury, to compel you to comply.

S. Evan Townsend

Peasants are people without sense or forethought. Therefore, they must not give rice to their wives and children at harvest time, but must save food for the future. They should eat millet, vegetables, and other coarse food instead of rice. Even the fallen leaves of plants should be saved as food against famine.

Keian no Ofuregaki

Let us do our best whilst we live for another tomorrow is coming when whilst we are long gone, another group of people shall come to either suffer from our worst or enjoy and build upon our best. Let us run whole heatedly today with all alacrity for another generation shall come for the baton from our hands to either blame us or congratulate us on how we lived the dream and journeyed in life through the good and the bad times; another generation shall come to ponder over our footprints as a good or a bad lesson for them! Let us run with all necessary zeal such that when we hand over the baton, our next generation will have no reason but to soldier on with courage, enthusiasm and absolute commitment to get to the finishing line with a great accomplishment and a noble story worth pondering over and over!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Democracy is probably the only discovery by mankind which mostly brought it only happiness.

In Confucian thought, individuals practice moral virtue both by restraining themselves and pursuing their own interests. This is a dual push-and-pull process. In today’s China, the latter is taken care of by capitalism and commerce. The former, however, needs to be taken care of by the rule of law. Otherwise, the system of governance is corrupted by unrestrained individual desires and selective enforcement of ‘virtue’ or law.

Bureaucrats and Politicians are different people, work of Bureaucrats makes us hate Politicians.

Self-governance does not mean no one is responsible. It means everyone is.

Humanity has determined it is supreme in the kingdom of animals, yet [the] beasts live a less tragic existence...and many of their tragedies are a consequence of so-called human brilliance.

When we finally achieve the full right of participation in American life, what we make of it will depend upon our sense of cultural values, and our creative use of freedom, not upon our racial identification. I see no reason why the heritage of world culture—which represents a continuum—should be confused with the notion of race. Japan erected a highly efficient modern technology upon a religious culture which viewed the Emperor as a god. The Germany which produced Beethoven and Hegel and Mann turned its science and technology to the monstrous task of genocide; one hopes that when what are known as the “Negro” societies are in full possession of the world’s knowledge and in control of their destinies, they will bring to an end all those savageries which for centuries have been committed in the name of race. From what we are now witnessing in certain parts of the world today, however, there is no guarantee that simply being non-white offers any guarantee of this. The demands of state policy are apt to be more influential than morality. I would like to see a qualified Negro as President of the United States. But I suspect that even if this were today possible, the necessities of the office would shape his actions far more than his racial identity.

The key to holding a logical argument or debate is to allow oneself to understand the other person’s argument no matter how divergent their views may seem.

Auliq-Ice

True leaders are willing to die for their dreams. They don't oppress with ignorance; they impress with visions". They live like Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela...

Israelmore Ayivor

Business is boss, politics is servant.

Politics doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt politics.

For our society to be better, we must revive our conscience and do Godly things.

Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Where there is society, there is no need for charity.

Human rights don't trickle down.

System fails when people with ability don't have authority and people with authority don't have ability.

An anarchist government somehow creates an impression in the hearts of citizens that no one cares.

An act of charity by the citizens questions the worthiness of the government.

Maybe it is not a coincidence that, even in heaven, under the perspective of the Bible, there is a hierarchy. After all, what better way to impose the “benefits” of accepting the power of a hierarchy in the human mind?

Miguel Reynolds Brandao

All ponzi schemes are upheld by a centripetal force caused by those orbiting the circles of power, celebrity and wealth and trying to get in. When the ponzi scheme reaches its point of maximum growth, the force disperses and the ponzi scheme collapses.

Family is in essence a small nation, and the nation a large family. In treating his own family with dignity, a ruler learns to govern his nation with dignity

Leaders will love to be poor and see their people rich, than to be rich and see their people poor. This is their mission.

Israelmore Ayivor

Cooler heads prevail while things spin completely out of control.

A journey to make real impact that changes lives, give meaning to life and living, and turns vision of the masses into realities demands a true focus, an utmost zeal and robustness and an unfailing tenacity to do whatever necessary within the powers and reach of a true leader, and with all needed dexterity, wit and wisdom, to make real impact have a meaning and give real liberation to the masses!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Within this historic and optimistic future in mind, I have made no value judgment of the destiny bestowed on each nation. For all this, however, leadership matters; so do the institutional structures and the system of political governance.

Go the extra mile to do the undone, but work within your limits, and in doing so also, don’t be a coward to question things within your limit that are not all that right, and don’t be too arrogant or proud or be filled with excessive knowledge to do things which might though be within your limit, yet out of limit, for you must live and leave nothing, but distinctive and lasting footprints!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Our national emblem has four lions but unfortunately we have highlighted more lambs and wolfs than real lions of our country.

Sharad Vivek Sagar

What is Science Fiction? It is the absence of governance and political arrangements in worlds where advanced technology marches onwards. Petty politics and primal instincts continue to dominate while scientific advancement continues. This is our problem today as well: our brightest minds devote themselves to science but shun governance and politics. So as in each catastrophe conjured and contemplated in science fiction, we run the risk of cosmic destruction, lest our greatest minds turn to resolving the outstanding problems of politics and governance first.

Usman W. Chohan

A society is driven by “social fear” always produces the seeds of doubt and unhappiness.

Nilantha Ilangamuwa

The only way to ensure democracy functions correctly is to question its governance constantly. Fail to do so and you may awake to find yourself living in a police state.

Stewart Stafford

Power is the ability to direct or privent the current or future actions of other groups and individuals.

Change can only take place if we desire the change.

Lailah Gifty Akita

Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. Get the rich, the greedy, the criminals, the stupid leader and so on ad nauseam.

In politics, it often pays to be ahead of the curve. That holds true for corporate governance too, even more so when politics enter the equation.

Leaders say "no" to corruption. Anyone playing a role in governance, and is not ready to do this is not a leader.

Israelmore Ayivor

A president who is burdened with a failed and unpopular war, and who has lost the trust of the country, simply can no longer govern. He is destined to become as much a failure as his war.

Glenn Greenwald

1 2 Next