Eduard Pestel quote: “The value of global modelling has been severely restricted by poor appreciation of the constraints under which governme…”

“I'm proud that I'm a politician. A politician is a man who understands government, and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

As quoted in The New York World Telegram & Sun (12 April 1958)
Source: Impromptu remarks http://books.google.com/books?id=2Tu3bScwKKAC&q=%22I'm+proud+that+I'm+a+politician+A+politician+is+a+man+who+understands+government+and+it+takes+a+politician+to+run+a+government+A+statesman+is+a+politician+who's+been+dead+10+or+15+years%22&pg=PT289#v=onepage before the Reciprocity Club, Washington, D.C. (11 April 1958)

“To politicians, solved problems represent a dire threat — of unemployment and poverty. That's why no problem ever tackled by the government has ever been solved. What they want is lots of problems they can promise to solve, so that we'll keep electing them — or letting them keep their jobs in a bureaucracy metastasizing like cancer.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Of Pharaohs and Firearms" http://www.jpfo.org/smith/smith-pharaohs.htm.

“The Night Watchman State has been replaced by Highway Robber States – governments in which no asset, no contract, no domain is safe from the fleeting whim of politicians.”

James Bovard (1956) American journalist

From Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin's Press, 1999) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigram%20page%20Freedom%20in%20Chains.htm

“We might perhaps be more tolerant of rulers turning preachers if they were moral giants. But what citizen looks at the government today thinking how wise and virtuous it is? Public respect for politicians has long been declining, even as the population at large has been seduced into responding to each new problem by demanding that the government should act. That we should be constantly demanding that an institution we rather despise should solve large problems argues a notable lack of logic in the demos.”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

The statesmen of times past have been replaced by a set of barely competent social workers eager to help 'ordinary people' solve daily problems in their lives. This strange aspiration is a very large change in public life. The electorates of earlier times would have responded with derision to politicians seeking power in order to solve our problems. Today, the demos votes for them.
Introduction, p. 3
The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life

“We might perhaps be more tolerant of rulers turning preachers if they were moral giants. But what citizen looks at the government today thinking how wise and virtuous it is? Public respect for politicians has long been declining, even as the population at large has been seduced into responding to each new problem by demanding that the government should act. That we should be constantly demanding that an institution we rather despise should solve large problems argues a notable lack of logic in the demos. The statesmen of times past have been replaced by a set of barely competent social workers eager to help 'ordinary people' solve daily problems in their lives. This strange aspiration is a very large change in public life. The electorates of earlier times would have responded with derision to politicians seeking power in order to solve our problems. Today, the demos votes for them.”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

Introduction, p. 3
The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life

“He reveals that he has been a poor politician, a bad judge and a malevolent individual.”

Gough Whitlam (1916–2014) Australian politician, 21st Prime Minister of Australia

Abiding Interests (1997), p. 44
On Garfield Barwick

“The assumption that government must be neutral among conceptions of the good generally appears in cases in which the Court protects speech that government would restrict. But the force of this assumption can also be seen where the Court has upheld restrictions on speech, most notably, in obscenity cases. Although the Court has been reluctant to protect obscenity under the First Amendment, its reasoning in recent obscenity cases displays the powerful influence of neutrality assumptions on constitutional law.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

Chap. 3. Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

“.. Is it indisputable that several aesthetic declarations of our French comrades (the Cubists) display a sort of masked academicism. It is not, indeed, a return to the Academy to declare that the subject, in painting, has a perfectly insignificant value?... To paint from the posing model as an absurdity, and an act of mental cowardice, even if the model be translated upon the picture in linear, spherical and cubic forms..”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

Source: 1912, Les exposants au public', 1912, pp. 2, 3.

“I believe the British government forms the best model the world ever produced, and such has been its progress in the minds of the many, that this truth gradually gains ground. This government has for its object public strength and individual security.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

It is said with us to be unattainable. All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government. Can a democratic assembly, who annually revolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to pursue the public good?
Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention, v. 1, p. 299. (June 19, 1787)
Debates of the Federal Convention (1787)

“We need to respect the independent choices of model of technology management and of public policies made by countries, and their right to participating in the global technological governance system as equals.”

Wang Qishan (1948) Chinese politician

Source: "China’s Vice President Decries Technological Hegemony" in The Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-vice-president-urges-governments-to-address-their-domestic-problems-11548258999 (23 January 2019)

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