Govern Yourself Quotes & Sayings

If we could know as intimately as we know our more immediate parents the long line of ancestors through whom the family spirit has passed on its way to us, we should probably become fatalists in face of the apparently overwhelming evidence that there is nothing in us that has not come to us from, or at least through, the Family. Family portrait galleries are a striking confirmation of the persistence of characteristics which ultimately govern the fortunes of successive generations. — Helen Bosanquet

I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves. — Joseph Smith Jr.

Curiosity, or the love of knowledge, has a very limited influence, and requires youth, leisure education, genius and example to make it govern any person — David Hume

We live in a bureaucratic, atomized world, but the system is still run by human beings. If as a writer, you want to capture the world we live in, I think you have some responsibility to at least try to get at some of the ways we've chosen to govern ourselves. — Adam Haslett

the Germans have got to be stopped. They think they're entitled to rule the world!" Da said: "We're British. Our empire holds sway over more than four hundred million people. Hardly any of them are entitled to vote. They have no control over their own countries. Ask the average British man why, and he'll say it's our destiny to govern inferior peoples. — Ken Follett

Each day look into your conscience and amend your faults; if you fail in this duty you will be untrue to the Knowledge and Reason that are within you. Keep a watchful eye over yourself as if you were your own enemy; for you cannot learn to govern yourself, unless you first learn to govern your own passions and obey the dictates of your conscience. — Khalil Gibran

President Obama has said that our aspirations should be realistic. We are not going to turn one of the poorest countries in the world, that was plunged into 30 years of war, into an advanced, industrialized, Western-style democracy. What we want to achieve is Afghanistan's capacity to secure and govern itself. — David Petraeus

But the long tunnels of art through which I walked in Rome that day had no ragged edges, cowardly colors, or shades of pastel that didn't know what to do with themselves. The wisdom, perfection, and beauty of the colors and forms I passed were more than enough, in their collectivity, to hint at the principles which govern the hereafter, whatever that may be. Indeed, even a detail of one painting can offer solid direction in this regard if one knows how to look — Mark Helprin

Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery and would exist if all humanity forgets it, so it is with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery and would remain even if we forget them. — Swami Vivekananda

Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses? — Jonathan Safran Foer

Our greatest duty to our children is to love them first. Secondly, it is to teach them. Not to frighten, force, or intimidate our children into submission, but to effectively teach them so that they have the knowledge and tools to govern themselves. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Instead of politicians, let the monkeys govern the countries; at least they will steal only the bananas! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The business of Hollywood, if you don't have other things going on, it will eat you up and spit you out ... If you take what those people and that social structure think of you - if you let it govern your life - you might as well just kill yourself. — Morgan Fairchild

No news conferences? Interviews now only with friendly journalists? You can't be president or vice president and govern in that style, as a sequestered figure. This has been Mr. Bush's style the past few years, and see where it got us. You must address America in its entirety, not as a sliver or a series of slivers but as a full and whole entity, a great nation trying to hold together. When you don't, when you play only to your little piece, you contribute to its fracturing. — Peggy Noonan

Have you ever wondered to yourself why it is that all people like me seem to have learned from you is how to imprison and murder each other, how to govern badly, and how to take the wealth of our country and place it in Swiss bank accounts? Have you ever wondered why it is that all we seem to have learned from you is how to corrupt our societies and how to be tyrants? You will have to accept that this is mostly your fault — Jamaica Kincaid

Let us ask ... how things work at the level of on-going subjugation, at the level of those continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behaviors, etc ... we should try to discover how it is that subjects are gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts, etc. We should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as a constitution of subjects. — Michel Foucault

What did the Revolution mean to the Native Americans, the Indians? They had been ignored by the fine words of the Declaration, had not been considered equal, certainly not in choosing those who would govern the American territories in which they lived, nor in being able to pursue happiness as they had pursued it for centuries before the white Europeans arrived. Now, with the British out of the way, the Americans could begin the inexorable process of pushing the Indians off their lands, killing them if they resisted. In short, as Francis Jennings puts it, the white Americans were fighting against British imperial control in the East, and for their own imperialism in the West. — Howard Zinn

Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

If the minority, and a small one too, is suffered to dictate to the majority, after measures have undergone the most solemn discussions by the representatives of the people, and their will through this medium is enacted into a law, there can be no security for life, liberty, or property; nor, if the laws are not to govern, can any man know how to conduct himself in safety. — George Washington

Use justice to rule a country. Use surprise to wage war. Use non-action to govern the world. — Laozi

For us all, the world is disorderly and dangerous; ungoverned, and apparently ungovernable. The questions arise: Who will restore order? Who can counter the danger of nuclear holocaust? Who alone can govern the world? The only answer is Jesus Christ! — Billy Graham

It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it. — Cormac McCarthy

Natalya hugged him hard, already torn with remorse over the forces that govern this family. "No, Seva, you won't be allowed to capture it," she said.
"Your grandfather believes in freedom. — Barbara Kingsolver

I am a queen because I know why how to govern myself. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I am a queen because I know how to govern myself. — Lailah Gifty Akita

School yourself in all occasions to keep perfectly cool; maintain a perfect control of temper, come what will: one that can govern himself can govern others. — Roseanne Montillo

If you want to govern the people,
You must place yourself below them.
If you want to lead people,
You must learn how to follow them. — Lao-Tzu

As human beings we govern our actions with our deepest fears. But if you name that shit, you claim that shit: let enough people into your closet and you'll find there's no more room for skeletons. Leave yourself nowhere to hide and you can live your life unguarded. — Kevin Smith

You can't have a country or a city or a state that's worth a damn unluss you govern within yourself in your day-to-day life. — Lee Iacocca

It is not easy to find the right way. You must learn to govern yourself, you must learn autonomy, you must manage your freedom or drown in it. You may strain the will after Experience because you need it for your books. Or you may perish under the heavy weight of Culture. You may make a fool of yourself anywhere. You may find illumination anywhere - in the gutter, in the college, in the corporation, in a submarine, in the library. No one man holds a patent on it. No man knows what it is likely to tell him to do. — Saul Bellow

It is far better to be free to govern or misgovern yourself than to be governed by anybody else — Kwame Nkrumah

A general presumption that Icings will govern well, is not a sufficient security to the People ... those who subjected themselves to the will of a man were governed by a beast. — Algernon Sidney

The cowardly belief that a person must stay in one place is too reminiscent of the unquestioning resignation of animals, beasts of burden stupefied by servitude and yet always willing to accept the slipping on of the harness. There are limits to every domain, and laws to govern every organized power. But the vagrant owns the whole vast earth that ends only at the non-existent horizon, and her empire is an intangible one, for her domination and enjoyment of it are things of the spirit. — Isabelle Eberhardt

The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those;
they govern me. — Louise Gluck

Show is not substance; realities govern wise men. — William Penn

Information technology alone cannot provide us an absolute shield against its evil twin disinformation technology. Our only protection is law, and that protection is available to us only if legitimate governments have the power to govern. — Paul Starr

Governments ... should not force and govern belief, which is a matter for the heart and conscience not for temporal authorities. — Katharina Zell

It is high time that the women of Republican America should know how much the laws that govern them are like the slave laws ofthe South ... — Harriot Kezia Hunt

The Bible is God's law-word which must govern every sphere of life and thought. — Rousas John Rushdoony

To know the laws that govern the winds, and to know that you know them, will give you an easy mind on your voyage round the world; otherwise you may tremble at the appearance of every cloud. — Joshua Slocum

People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion - these are the two things that govern us. And yet - — Oscar Wilde

They who plead an absolute right cannot be satisfied with anything short of personal representation, because all natural rights must be the rights of individuals; as by nature there is no such thing as politic or corporate personality; all these things are mere fictions of law, they are creatures of voluntary institution; men as men are individuals, and nothing else. They, therefore, who reject the principle of natural and personal representation, are essentially and eternally at variance with those who claim it. As to the first sort of reformers, it is ridiculous to talk to them of the British constitution upon any or upon all of its bases; for they lay it down that every man ought to govern himself, and that where he cannot go himself he must send his representative; that all other government is usurpation; and is so far from having a claim to our obedience, it is not only our right, but our duty, to resist it. — Edmund Burke

In order that a people may be free, it is necessary that the governed be sages, and those who govern, gods. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders. — Frank Herbert

Everything we do in public policy prevents us from doing something else. To govern is to choose. — Richard Lamm

The extent to which we take everyday objects for granted is the precise extent to which they govern and inform our lives. — Margaret Visser

In a pre-scientific society the best the common man can do is pin his faith on a leader and give him his support, trusting in his benevolence against the misuse of the delegated power and in his wisdom to govern justly and make war successfully. — B.F. Skinner

He [Thomas Edison] considered [money] as a raw material, like metal, to be used rather than amassed, and so he kept plowing his funds into new projects. Several times he was all but bankrupt. But he refused to let dollar signs govern his actions. — Charles Edison

Syllables govern the world. — George Bernard Shaw

A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reform. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain. — Anatole France

We have a small faction, and they are a minority, who believe they are there to govern. Then there is the majority of us who believe that indeed we are there to govern but more importantly we are there to be an opposition to the Democratic philosophy and the only way to do that is through confrontation. — Tom DeLay

The universe is not a stagnant place where technology stands still and only the few govern its destiny. Rather, it is a multidimensional dynamic entity that interacts with all things, even the very smallest. And what part we each place in it and the effect we have on it is a matter of our own choice. — R.G. Risch