“A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel.”

“If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler's bidding.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

“You must welcome change as the rule but not as your ruler.”

Denis Waitley (1933) American writer

“He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

“The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

“Dear rulers … I maintain that the civil authorities are under obligation to compel the people to send their children to school. … If the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service to bear spear and rifle, to mount ramparts, and perform other martial duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil, whose object it is secretly to exhaust our cities and principalities of their strong men.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

“Love must be learned and learned again; There is no end.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

“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."”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Fooled by Randomness

“Mystery is in a way the guarantee of the boundlessness of the might of the ruler: power bound to reason must always have limitations, great though it may be.”

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

“To learn to succeed, you must first learn to fail.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman