Governing The Ungovernable Quotes

Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government.

Books educate people and educated people ask awkward questions of those who govern them. The educated, in short, are considered ungovernable. Better to keep people ignorant of the past and to concentrate their minds on the utopia that lies ahead.

The choice is not, Reich argues, between a governed and an ungoverned market, but between a market governed by laws favoring monopolistic companies and one governed by those favoring small business.

Government is nothing more than the combined force of society or the united power of the multitude for the peace, order, safety, good, and happiness of the people... There is no king or queen bee distinguished from all the others by size or figure or beauty and variety of colors in the human hive. No man has yet produced any revelation from heaven in his favor, any divine communication to govern his fellow men. Nature throws us all into the world equal and alike... The preservation of liberty depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation it is impossible they should be enslaved. Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable... There is a danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living wth power to endanger public liberty.

the day women are allowed to learn to read and write the world will become ungovernable.

A woman's body always stands on the outskirts of the town, verging on uncivilization. A think paper gown is all that separates it from the wilderness. Half of its whole being is devoted to remembering how to live in the woods. This is why Witch, this is why whore, this is why Unlucky, and this is why Unclean. This is why attempts to govern the female body always have the feeling of a last resort, because the female body is fundamentally ungovernable. Barbie, the neatest, tannest, blondest tall who ever existed. Barbie, from the Greek, meaning foreign or strange.

You think it’s terrible that people aren’t rational, that they behave like animals and have to be manipulated like animals. You want everyone to be like you. But that’s childishly egocentric. If everyone were like you there could be no society, no civilization. Everything would fly apart. If there were only a thousand men like you in this country it would be ungovernable. It was just a fluke that I caught you, after half the Bureau had been tearing its hair out for months because of you. If there were 50 of you at work in Washington, 50 in Chicago, 100 in New York… we’d be utterly incapable of dealing with the situation. You’d bring the government down.

But I would not say a word until I could set aside all I know or believe about nations, war, leaders, the governed and the ungovernable; all I suspect about armor and entrails. First I would freshen my tongue, abandon sentences crafted to know evil--wanton or studied; explosive or quietly sinister; whether born of a sated appetite or hunger; of vengeance or the simple compulsion to stand up before falling down. I would purge my language of hyperbole, of its eagerness to analyze the levels of wickedness; ranking them, calculating their higher or lower status among others of its kind. Speaking to the broken and the dead is too difficult for a mouth full of blood. Too holy an act for impure thoughts. ... I must be steady and I must be clear, knowing all the time that I have nothing to say--no words stronger than steel that pressed you into itself; no scripture older or more elegant than the ancient atoms you have become. And I have nothing to give either--except this gesture, this thread thrown between your humanity and mine: I want to hold you in my arms and as your soul got shot out of its box of flesh to understand as you have done, the wit of eternity; it's gift of unhinged release through the darkness of its knell.

We should finally not be surprised that even a degraded citizenry will throw off the enlightened shackles of a liberal order, particularly as the very successes of that order generate the pathologies of a citizenry that finds itself powerless before forces of government, economy, technology, and globalizing forces. Yet once degraded, such a citizenry would be unlikely to insist upon Tocquevillian self-command; its response would predictably take the form of inarticulate cries for a strongman to rein in the power of a distant and ungovernable state and market. Liberalism itself seems likely to generate demotic demands for an illiberal autocrat who promises to protect the people against the vagaries of liberalism itself. Liberals are right to fear this eventuality, but persist in willful obliviousness of their own complicity in the birth of the illiberal progeny of the liberal order itself.

First: modern society, with its millions, is essentially ungovernable. The public must instead be controlled by manipulation. The men who do this manipulating, in government or not, are the true leaders, philosopher-kings. They need not manipulate all the people, only the few thousand who set the agenda. The drivers of history are not the people, in other words, nor the elite who influence the people, but the PR men who influence the elite who influence the people.

Inflation did not conjure up Hitler, any more than he, as it happened, conjured it. But it made Hitler possible. It is daring to say that without it Hitler would have achieved nothing: but so is it daring to assert that, had enormous post-war unemployment not been held at bay for years by financing the government’s deficits and by an ungoverned credit policy, bloody revolution would have occurred, leading presumably to an equally bloody civil war whose outcome can only be guessed at. In all these matters, it was anyway touch and go.

In April, 1926, France and the United States finally negotiated a war debt settlement at forty cents on the dollar. The [French] budget was at last fully balanced. Still the franc kept falling. By May, the exchange rate stood at over thirty to the dollar. With a currency in free-fall, prices now rising at 2% a month - over 25% a year - and the Government apparently impotent, everyone made the obvious comparison with the situation in Germany four years earlier. In fact, there was no real parallel. Germany in 1922 had lost all control of its budget deficit and in that single year expanded the money supply ten fold. By contrast, the French had largely solved their fiscal problems and its money supply was under control. The main trouble was the fear that the deep divisions between the right and left had made France ungovernable. The specter of chronic political chaos associated with revolving door governments and finance ministers was exacerbated by the uncertainty over the governments ability to fund itself given the overhang of more than $10 billion in short term debt. It was this psychology of fear, a generalized loss of nerve, that seemed to have gripped French investors and was driving the downward spiral of the franc. The risk was that international speculators, those traditional bugaboos of the Left, would create a self-fulfilling meltdown as they shorted the currency in the hope of repurchasing it later at a lower price thereby compounding the very downward trend that they were trying to exploit. It was the obverse of a bubble where excessive optimism translates into rising prices which then induces even more buying. Now excessive pessimism was translating into falling prices which were inducing even more selling. In the face of this all embracing miasma of gloom neither the politicians nor the financial establishment seemed to have any clue what to do.

The ‘I’ principle has reached the ‘does not matter, need not be’ state, and is not related to form. There is nothing but it, and nothing beyond it, so therefore it alone is complete and eternal. It is indestructible itself, but has the power to destroy – therefore it alone is true freedom and existence. Through it comes immunity from all sorrow: therefore its spirit is ecstasy. Renounce everything by the Neither-Neither meditation, and take shelter in the Neither-Neither state. Surely it is the abode of the Kiã? It is our unconditional release from duality and time: it is effective even if only symbolically reached. Once the belief is free from all ideas except pleasure, the Karma of displeasure speedily exhausts itself through Karmic law. In that moment beyond time, the ego becomes its own gratifier by its own law, its every wish gratified without the payment of sorrow. Here, there is no necessitation; ‘does not matter-need not be’ and ‘please your self ’ are its creeds. In that state, what you wish to believe can be true, without subjection to beliefs from outside. The Ego has now become the Absolute, and can be pleased by this imitation of the means of government: he uses these means, but is himself ungoverned. Kiã is the supreme bliss; this is the psychology of ecstasy by non-resistance.

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!

the once-vital nation of the Romans was slipping farther and farther down the slopes of madness. Material prosperity and external peace were not enough; then, as now, they made poor substitutes for hope and idealism. Ever more fragmented, daily more frightened, helplessly angry and pathologically skeptical—the Roman people soon began to retreat into morbid individualism. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. The government, presented with an exploding population of ungovernable libertines and hopelessly hamstrung by political gridlock, did what governments always do under such circumstances: incapable of believing in a Shepherd, they started looking for a Strongman.

Government is nothing more than the combined force of society, or the united power of the multitude, for the peace, order, safety, good and happiness of the people. . . . There is no king or queen bee distinguished from all others, by size or figure or beauty and variety of colors, in the human hive. No man has yet produced any revelation from heaven in his favor, any divine communication to govern his fellow men. Nature throws us all into the world equal and alike. . . . The preservation of liberty depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation, it is impossible they should be enslaved. . . . Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable. . . . There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. At

Much deeper hollowings-out have occurred in places that lack the infrastructure, educational, technological, and government advantages of the American system. Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, India, South Africa, Romania, and the former Soviet Union—really any country that has attempted to modernize in China’s wake—have been hurt particularly badly.

The slash-and-burn politics he brought to the Capitol made it ungovernable, and the zealots he brought into the Republican Party had no wish to govern. It has been that way ever since.

A woman's body always stands on the outskirts of the town, verging on uncivilization. A thin paper gown is all that separates it from wilderness. Half of its whole being is devoted to remembering how to live in the woods. This is why Witch, this is why Whore, this is why Unlucky and this is why Unclean. This is why attempts to govern the female body always have the feeling of a last resort because the female body is fundamentally ungovernable.

The city in which the shaping by his hand is most evident is New York, Titan of cities, collosal synthesis of urban hope and urban despair. It has become a cliché by the mid-twentieth century to say that New York was "ungovernable," and this meant, since the powers of government in the city had largely devolved on its mayor, that no mayor could govern it, could hope to do more than merely stay afloat in the maelstrom that had engulfed the vast metropolis. In such a context, the cliché was valid. No mayor shaped New York; no mayor—not even La Guardia—left upon its roiling surface more than the faintest of lasting imprints. But Robert Moses shaped New York.

A woman's body always stands on the outskirts of the town, verging on uncivilization. A thin paper gown is all that separates it from the wilderness. Half of its whole being is devoted to remembering how to live in the woods. This is why Witch, this is why Whore, this is why Unlucky and this is why Unclean. This is why attempts to govern the female body always have the feeling of a last resort, because the female body is fundamentally ungovernable.

A peaceful country, it is a rich country. That is why our enemies are doing everything in their power to cause Instability in our country. The sad part is they are using one of our own people to cause that Instability, crime and lawless. They want to make our country ungovernable so they can come as saviors. Come as they are there to help only to find out that they are there to steal from us. To steal our resources and occupy our land. They create problems for us , so they can come up with solutions.

With all respect for popular assemblies be it spoken, it is hard to recollect one folly, infirmity, or vice, to which a single man is subject, and from which a body of commons, either collective or represented, can be wholly exempt. . . . Whence it comes to pass, that in their results have sometimes been found the same spirit of cruelty and revenge, of malice and pride; the same blindness, and obstinacy, and unsteadiness; the same ungovernable rage and anger; the same injustice, sophistry, and fraud, that ever lodged in the breast of any individual.

A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned.

Cicero thought, is never; besides, it is vitiated by the false assumption of equality. The best form of government is a mixed constitution, like that of pre-Gracchan Rome: the democratic power of the assemblies, the aristocratic power of the Senate, the almost royal power of the consuls for a year. Without checks and balances monarchy becomes despotism, aristocracy becomes oligarchy, democracy becomes mob rule, chaos, and dictatorship. Writing five years after Caesar’s consulate, Cicero cast a dart in his direction: Plato says that from the exaggerated license which people call liberty, tyrants spring up as from a root . . . and that at last such liberty reduces a nation to slavery. Everything in excess is changed into its opposite. . . . For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as leader . . . someone bold and unscrupulous . . . who curries favor with the people by giving them other men’s property. To such a man, because he has much reason for fear if he remains a private citizen, the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He surrounds himself with an armed guard, and emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.68 Nevertheless, Caesar won; and Cicero thought it best to bury his discontent in melodious platitudes on law, friendship, glory, and old age. Silent leges inter arma, he said—“laws are silent in time of war”; but at least he could

Cicero thought, is never; besides, it is vitiated by the false assumption of equality. The best form of government is a mixed constitution, like that of pre-Gracchan Rome: the democratic power of the assemblies, the aristocratic power of the Senate, the almost royal power of the consuls for a year. Without checks and balances monarchy becomes despotism, aristocracy becomes oligarchy, democracy becomes mob rule, chaos, and dictatorship. Writing five years after Caesar’s consulate, Cicero cast a dart in his direction: Plato says that from the exaggerated license which people call liberty, tyrants spring up as from a root . . . and that at last such liberty reduces a nation to slavery. Everything in excess is changed into its opposite. . . . For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as leader . . . someone bold and unscrupulous . . . who curries favor with the people by giving them other men’s property. To such a man, because he has much reason for fear if he remains a private citizen, the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He surrounds himself with an armed guard, and emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.68

Non-French ethnics can have and keep citizenship, but they are de facto forced by the French government and French culture alike to live in the country’s infamous suburb-slums, the banlieues.

In many ways, the French system takes the two types of racism most prevalent in the United States and applies the worst of both. In the American South, racism takes the form of, “We will mingle, but we are not equal.” In the American North, it is in the vein of, “We are equal, but we will not mingle.” In France, the targets of racism are out of sight and out of mind, consigned to ghettos and at the back of the line as regards government services.

Anyone sufficiently arrogant to think the poor will simply starve in silence has a particularly weak grasp of not only biology, but history. Far more cultures and governments and dynasties and countries and empires have collapsed throughout history from famine and failures in food distribution than have been wiped out by war or disease or revolution or terrorism.

In the 2010 census, the Russian government discovered more than eleven thousand small towns, once home to over a combined one million people had been abandoned since 1990.

When imperial or Soviet Moscow said it wanted a rail line to here or a factory built there, the full force of the state was behind the action, and it simply happened. In a free-market system, the government has fewer resources relative to the broader system, private interests come into play, and the court system must balance the two in an environment in which law constrains rapid action.

We have often described the Internet as a “lawless” space, ungoverned and ungovernable by design. Its decentralized makeup and constantly mutating interlinking structure make government attempts to “control” it futile. But