(A ruler) cannot and should not keep his word when to do so would go against his interests or when the reason he pledged it no longer holds.
The best jihad is to speak a word of justice to an oppressive ruler.
What I was utterly convinced of, and still am, is the idea that the only responsibility the free intellectual has is vis-a-vis himself. He is not responsible to either a political party or a ruler.
Let a ruler base his government upon virtuous principles, and he will be like the pole-star, which remains steadfast in its place, while all the host of stars turn towards it
Phronimos, possessing practical wisdom. But the only virtue special to a ruler is practical wisdom; all the others must be possessed, so it seems, both by rulers and ruled. The virtue of a person being ruled is not practical wisdom but correct opinion; he is rather like a person who makes the pipes, while the ruler is the one who can play them.
In dealing with those who share his bed, the enlightened ruler may enjoy their beauty but should not listen to their special pleas.
I hymn and bless Your uncountable compassion and philanthropy, as You desired to number me with Your chosen servants. Look down, now, upon me the lowly one, O God and Master, Lord of mercy, Ruler of all and All-powerful One, hearken to my prayer, and fulfill my entreaties in praise.
No civilization can exist part free and part slave. . . We have never had any other kind of civilization. It has always been that way. There has always been a division of man. There has always been the conqueror and conquered-the master and slave-the ruler and the ruled-the oppressor and the oppressed. There has never been content nor unity. There has been only discontent and disunity.
The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition.
Know yourself and fit yourself to new fashions. For there is a new ruler among the gods.
He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap.
Whatever may be, I am still largely the creator and ruler of my emotional destiny.
You must welcome change as the rule but not as your ruler.
"He passed over his fall, and appointed him first of the Apostles; wherefore He said: ' 'Simon, Simon,' etc. (in Ps. cxxix. 2). God allowed him to fall, because He meant to make him ruler over the whole world, that, remembering his own fall, he might forgive those who should slip in the future. And that what I have said is no guess, listen to Christ Himself saying: 'Simon, Simon, etc. '"
This morning President Obama met with Britain's Prince William in the Oval Office. It was a meeting between a symbolic ruler with no real power and the future king of England.
Wittgenstein's ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler's reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler.
There is the need for someone against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler, you won't make the crooked straight.
Sometimes coincidentally an unintelligent person can accomplish a task but that does not mean that he is a knower of means and device or is experienced. A ruler should be careful enough to designate other tasks to such persons.
It is because freedom means the renunciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.
I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.
