Quoted in Ronald Tiersky, "François Mitterrand: A Very French President" (2003) Page 85 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LiHLZQ6XtzEC&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=to+govern+is+to+choose+pierre+mendes+france&source=bl&ots=SctLjoa1a2&sig=4UCVpBCY1yTXjQ6ZI2syDlt5Flw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vq56UJuQJLOq0AWQ-oGIBw&sqi=2&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=to%20govern%20is%20to%20choose%20pierre%20mendes%20france&f=false
“To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.”
Quoted in the Daily Mail (London, 26 March 1991), as cited in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0231071949, ed. Robert Andrews, Columbia University Press (1993), p. 381
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Nigel Lawson 22
British Conservative politician and journalist 1932Related quotes
“I am for the state only doing what people are unable to do in the absence of government action.”
Text of television interview with Mike Wallace, New York, New York, October 17 and 18, 1960, as quoted in Walter P Reuther: Selected Papers (1961), by Henry M. Christman, p. 322
1950s, Television interview with Mike Wallace (1960)
“Our responsibility is one of decision — for to govern is to choose.”
1962, Address at Independence Hall
Context: The necessity for comity between the National Government and the several States is an indelible lesson of our long history. Because our system is designed to encourage both differences and dissent, because its checks and balances are designed to preserve the rights of the individual and the locality against preeminent central authority, you and I, Governors, recognize how dependent we both are, one upon the other, for the successful operation of our unique and happy form of government. Our system and our freedom permit the legislative to be pitted against the executive, the State against the Federal Government, the city against the countryside, party against party, interest against interest, all in competition or in contention one with another. Our task — your task in the State House and my task in the White House — is to weave from all these tangled threads a fabric of law and progress. We are not permitted the luxury of irresolution. Others may confine themselves to debate, discussion, and that ultimate luxury — free advice. Our responsibility is one of decision — for to govern is to choose.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870), Note I : Hâjî Abdû, The Man
Context: That creatures endowed with the mere possibility of liberty should not always choose the Good appears natural. But that of the milliards of human beings who have inhabited Earth, not one should have been found invariably to choose Good, proves how insufficient is the solution. Hence no one believes in the existence of the complete man under the present state of things. The Haji rejects all popular and mythical explanation by the Fall of "Adam," the innate depravity of human nature, and the absolute perfection of certain Incarnations, which argues their divinity. He can only wail over the prevalence of evil, assume its foundation to be error, and purpose to abate it by uprooting that Ignorance which bears and feeds it.
His "eschatology," like that of the Soofis generally, is vague and shadowy.
“Anything said appears to be a confrontation between the government and the Church.”
Source: Buenos Aires bishop says ad limina visit is ‘pastoral and religious’ https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/15368/buenos-aires-bishop-says-ad-limina-visit-is-pastoral-and-religious (15 March 2009)
On construction of the Unity Bridge, January 2005 http://www.eastandard.net/archives/cl/hm_news/news.php?articleid=10287
2005
2000s, 2005, Address to the National Endowment for Democracy (October 2005)
What Trump understands about religious liberty in America? http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/05/04/what-trump-understands-about-religious-liberty-in-america.html (May 4, 2017)
2010s, 2017, May
Writing about the horns of Onthophagus, in 'The Onthophagi'