Quotes about executive
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“I wish I were Commander in Chief of India. The first thing I would do to strike that Oriental race with amazement (not in the least regarding them as if they lived in the Strand, London, or at Camden Town), should be to proclaim to them in their language, that I considered my Holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested; and that I begged them to do me the favor to observe that I was there for that purpose and no other, and was now proceeding, which all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution, to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the earth.”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

in a private letter to Baronness Burdett-Coutts on 4 October 1857

God

“A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Country

“Defending the Constitution is always important. That duty is even more vital today, when the president and top administration officials argue that the executive branch may break the law whenever the president deems it to be necessary in a time which he declares to be wartime.”

Bob Barr (1948) Republican and Libertarian politician

Press release, (8 July 2008) Barack Obama Should Defend Constitution, Lead Fight Against FISA, Says Bob Barr http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/07-08-2008/0004845380&EDATE=, PR Newswire (press release), 8 July 2008. 2000s, 2008

Law, Time

“Our heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive; and at the same time more terrible to the workers of iniquity, more awful in the executions of His punishments, and more ready to detect in every false way, than we are apt to suppose Him to be.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith

Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 257 (11 April 1842)
1840s

Way, Time, Falseness

“Most business executives accept that bribes and grease money are costs of doing business in "soft "states.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

Money, Business

“Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.”

Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States

Letter accepting the nomination for governor of New York (October 1882).

People, Law

“Lenin's thesis is that the party Central Committee should have the privilege of naming all the local committees of the party. It should have the right to appoint the effective organs of all local bodies from Geneva to Liege, from Tomsk to Irkutsk. It should also have the right to impose on all of them its own ready-made rules of party conduct. It should have the right to rule without appeal on such questions as the dissolution and reconstitution of local organizations. This way, the Central Committee could determine, to suit itself, the composition of the highest party organs. The Central Committee would be the only thinking element in the party. All other groupings would be its executive limbs.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Leninism or Marxism? (1904)

Way, Question, Thinking

“On April 3, 1956, according to news reports, a Mrs. Julia Chase of Hagerstown, Maryland, while on a tour of the White House, slipped away from her tour group and vanished into the heart of the building. For four and a half hours, Mrs. Chase, who was described later as “dishevelled, vague and not quite lucid,” wandered through the White House, setting small fires—five in all. That’s how tight security was in those days: a not-quite-lucid woman was able to roam unnoticed through the executive mansion for more than half a working day.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 62

Heart, Housing

“The science of agriculture does not lay down any positive rules, but it develops the motives by which the best possible method of proceeding may be discovered and successfully pursued. In fact, the art executes some law given and received, but it is from science that law emanates.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section I: The fundamental principles, p. 2.

Law, Art, Motivation, Science

“The right of self-determination of the peoples includes the right to a state of their own. However, the foundation of a state does not increase the freedom of a people. The system of the United Nations that is based on nation-states has remained inefficient. Meanwhile, nation-states have become serious obstacles for any social development. Democratic confederalism is the contrasting paradigm of the oppressed people. Democratic confederalism is a non-state social paradigm. It is not controlled by a state. At the same time, democratic confederalism is the cultural organizational blueprint of a democratic nation. Democratic confederalism is based on grassroots participation. Its decision-making processes lie with the communities. Higher levels only serve the coordination and implementation of the will of the communities that send their delegates to the general assemblies. For limited space of time they are both mouthpiece and executive institution. However, the basic power of decision rests with the local grassroots institutions.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: Prison Writings: Roots of Civilisation, excerpt " Democratic Confederalism http://www.freedom-for-ocalan.com/english/".

People, Lie, Communication, Decision

“It is doubtful whether the artist [unknown] altogether knew what he depicted here in this panel, and even more doubtful whether he could have expressed it in words. That which we praise here as well thought-out and cleverly arranged may, in fact, have been achieved by him unconsciously; for the artist was transformed by pure harmoniousness while executing this picture, and his feeling become his law. Only his disposition, his spiritual exaltation, could have brought forth such a fruit as this picture. Just as the pious man prays without speaking a word and the Almighty hearkens unto him, so the artist with true feeling paints and the sensitive man understands and recognizes it; while even the less sensitive gain some inkling of it.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

cited in: Vaughan, William-Börsch-Supan, Helmut- Neidhardt, Hans Joachim, Caspar David Friedrich. 1774-1840. Romantic Landscape Painting in Dresden, London, The Tate gallery, 1972, p. 104
undated

Law, Feeling, Understanding, Painting

“The Mughal rulers of the Punjab were evidently concerned with the growth of the Panth, and in 1605 the Emperor Jahangir made an entry in his memoirs, the Tuzuk-i-Jahāṅgīrī, concerning Guru Arjan's support for his rebellious son Khusrau Mirza. Too many people, he wrote, were being persuaded by his teachings, and if the Guru would not become a Muslim the Panth had to be extinguished. Jahangir believed that Guru Arjan was a Hindu who pretended to be a saint, and that he had been thinking of forcing Guru Arjan to convert to Islam or his false trade should be eliminated, for a long time. Mughal authorities seem plainly to have been responsible for Arjan's death in custody in Lahore, and this may be accepted as an established fact. Whether death was by execution, the result of torture, or drowning in the Ravi River remains unresolved. For Sikhs, Arjan is the first martyr Guru.”

Guru Arjan (1563–1606) The fifth Guru of Sikhism

W.H. McLeod (2009). The A to Z of Sikhism. Scarecrow Press. p. 20 (Arjan's Death). ISBN 9780810863446.

Death, People, Support, Thinking

“Civil service. The merit system has long been recognized as the correct basis for employment in our, civil service. I believe that first second, and third class postmasters, and without covering in the present membership tile field force of prohibition enforcement, should be brought within the classified service by statute law. Otherwise the Executive order of one administration is changed by the Executive order of another administration, and little real progress is made. Whatever its defects, the merit system is certainly to be preferred to the spoils system.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Law, Change

“A proposed profile of UML—Executable UML—supports creating a complete and implementation-neutral self-contained expression of application functionality. Steven J. Mellor and Marc J. Balcer define this profile in their book Executable UML: A Foundation for Model-Driven Architecture”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

The Limits of Software

Books, Support

“[B]y requiring that an execution be relatively painless, we necessarily protect the inmate from enduring any punishment that is comparable to the suffering inflicted on his victim. This trend, while appropriate and required by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.”

John Paul Stevens (1920–2019) Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Concurring in the judgment, Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. 35 (2008).

Suffering

“Gil can't be a minister and, at the same time, work for a record company. It's the same as if the president of FED was an executive of BankBoston.”

Lobão (1957) Brazilian musician

Folha Online, December 28, 2005 - 13h37

Time

“A cabinet is a combining committee,—a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.”

Walter Bagehot book The English Constitution

No. I, "The Cabinet", p. 14
The English Constitution (1867)

Parting

“As you know, I do not believe that the Mahatma's principle [of non-cooperation] can be the true foundation or his programme the true means of bringing out the genuine freedom and greatness of India, her Swarajya and Samrajya. On the other hand … I hold that school [of Tilakite nationalism] to be out of date. My own policy, if I were in the field, would be radically different in principle and programme from both, however it might coincide in certain points. But the country is not yet ready to understand its principle or to execute its programme…. Because I know this very well, I am content to work still on the spiritual and psychic plane, preparing there the ideas and forces, which may afterwards at the right moment and under the right conditions precipitate themselves into the vital and material field….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

December 1, 1922
India's Rebirth

School, Idea, Understanding, Freedom

“Was Rome dispensing "God's divine Justice" when it forbade Peter and Paul from preaching in public? Were Peter and Paul "justly reprimanded for their sins" by being imprisoned and executed? Was Jesus being justly punished for his sin when the Sanhedrin sent him to be executed by Pilate? Was Germany dispensing divine wrath to Israel, Poland, etc., when they plotted to take over the world and exterminate all non-Aryans? … I am trying to say that the State does not have a license to do anything it wants … and when we are ordered by the State to violate God's law, we must not bow to Baal. Civil disobedience is just as mandatory as civil subservience. It all must past through the filter of conscience, not to mention Christ's mandate that we recognize that the Kingdom has already come. We are now its citizens. … we are under no obligation to abdicate conscience on behalf of the State.”

Joshua Casteel (1979–2012) US Army soldier, lecturer, and writer

Source: Letters from Abu Ghraib (2008), pp. 64-65.

God, World, Justice, Law

“I would rather see Rome ruled by a man who once had to ask his accountant tricky questions before his steward could pay the butcher’s bill than by some mad limb like Nero, who was brought up believing himself the son and the grandson of gods, and who thought wearing the purple gave him free rein to indulge his personal vanities, execute real talent, bankrupt the Treasury, burn half of Rome – and bore the living daylights out of paying customers in theatres!”

Lindsey Davis book Shadows in Bronze

Shadows in Bronze

God, Question, Personality, Madness

“Equality can only be measured by outcome: and this means the imposition of racial quotas. The job of the Senior Executive is therefore to be a senior racist.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Theodore Dalrymple finds a cure for the German malady of low blood pressure: read The Guardian's job advertisements.
The Social Affairs Unit (2006 - 2008)

“I discovered then that religion had to become real to me and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee — I never will forget it. And oh yes, I prayed a prayer and I prayed out loud that night. I said, "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. I think I'm right; I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now; I'm faltering; I'm losing my courage. And I can't let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak." I wanted tomorrow morning to be able to go before the executive board with a smile on my face. And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness, stand up for justice, stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world." And I'll tell you, I've seen the lightning flash. I've heard the thunder roll. I felt sin-breakers dashing, trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No, never alone. No, never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool (1967)

God, People, Truth, World

“All the nation has been saddened by the extent to which the country has fallen during the last week. I have therefore, with much reluctance, assumed executive authority.”

Frank Bainimarama (1954) Prime Minister of Fiji

(29 May 2000, announcing that he had taken over the government from President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara
2000

Country

“I am one of what must be an increasing number who find the portentous moralisings of A. Solzhenitsyn a bore and an irritation. Scarcely any aspect of life in the countries where he passes his voluntary exile has failed to incur his pessimistic censure. Coming from Russia, where freedom of the press has been not so much unknown as uncomprehended since long before the Revolution, he is shocked to discover that a free press disseminated all kinds of false, partial and invented information and that journalists contradict themselves from one day to the next without shame and without apology. Only a Russian would find all that surprising, or fail to understand that freedom which is not misused is not freedom at all.

Like all travellers he misunderstands what he observes. It simply is not true that ‘within the Western countries the press has become more powerful than the legislative power, the executive and the judiciary’. The British electorate regularly disprove this by electing governments in the teeth of the hostility and misrepresentation of virtually the whole of the press. Our modern Munchhausen has, however, found a more remarkable mare’s nest still: he has discovered the ‘false slogan, characteristic of a false era, that everyone is entitled to know everything’. Excited by this discovery he announces a novel and profound moral principle, a new addendum to the catalogue of human rights. ‘People,’ he says, ‘have a right not to know, and it is a more valuable one.’ Not merely morality but theology illuminates the theme: people have, say Solzhenitsyn, ‘the right not to have their divine souls’ burdened with ‘the excessive flow of information’.

Just so. Whatever may be the case in Russia, we in the degenerate West can switch off the radio or television, or not buy a newspaper, or not read such parts of it as we do not wish to. I can assure Solzhenitsyn that the method works admirably, ‘right’ or ‘no right’. I know, because I have applied it with complete success to his own speeches and writings.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Letter in answer to Solzhenitsyn's Harvard statement (21 June 1978), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), p. 577
1970s

Life, Hostility, People, Travel

“The public execution, then, has a juridico-political function. It is a ceremonial by which a momentarily injured sovereignty is reconstituted.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter One, The Spectacle of the Scaffold
Context: The public execution, then, has a juridico-political function. It is a ceremonial by which a momentarily injured sovereignty is reconstituted. It restores that sovereignty by manifesting it at its most spectacular. The public execution, however hasty and everyday, belongs to a whole series of great rituals in which power is eclipsed and restored (coronation, entry of the king into a conquered city, the submission of rebellious subjects); over and above the crime that has placed the sovereign in contempt, it deploys before all eyes an invincible force. Its aim is not so much to re-establish a balance as to bring into play, as its extreme point, the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength.

“Foundational to our exceptional nation’s sacred private property rights, a business must have freedom to locate where it wishes. In a free market, if a business makes a mistake (including a marketing mistake that perhaps Carrier executives made), threatening to move elsewhere claiming efficiency’s sake, then the market’s invisible hand punishes. Thankfully, that same hand rewards, based on good business decisions. But this time-tested truth assumes we’re operating on a level playing field. When government steps in arbitrarily with individual subsidies, favoring one business over others, it sets inconsistent, unfair, illogical precedent. Meanwhile, the invisible hand that best orchestrates a free people’s free enterprise system gets amputated. Then, special interests creep in and manipulate markets. Republicans oppose this, remember? Instead, we support competition on a level playing field, remember? Because we know special interest crony capitalism is one big fail.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

2016, But… Wait… The Good Guys Won’t Win With More Crony Capitalism (December 2, 2016)

People, Truth, Business, Support

“The way and manner God executes His plan in our lives differs.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On the uniqueness of his calling - "I Have No Money In My Account - TB Joshua" http://www.modernghana.com/news/234607/1/i-have-no-money-in-my-account-tb-joshua.html Modern Ghana (August 24 2009)

God, Way

“In recent years, demagogy, violence, cruelty, and vileness have seized a great country embarked on the path of socialist development. I refer, of course, to China. It is impossible without horror and pain to read about the mass contagion of anti-humanism being spread by "the great helmsman" and his accomplices, about the Red Guards who, according to the Chinese radio, "jumped with joy" during public executions of "ideological enemies" of Chairman Mao.
The idiocy of the cult of personality has assumed in China monstrous, grotesquely tragicomic forms, carrying to the point of absurdity many of the traits of Stalinism and Hitlerism. But this absurdity has proved effective in making fools of tens of millions of people and in destroying and humiliating millions of intelligent citizens.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Police Dictatorships

Pain, People, Fools, Intelligence

“This return of Republics back to their principles also results from the simple virtue of one man, without depending on any law that excites him to any execution: none the less, they are of such influence and example that good men desire to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life contrary to those examples.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 3, Ch. 1
Discourses on Livy (1517)

Life, Men, Law, Dependency

“It is a bit unsettling, at first, to think of Apple as a control freak, because it is completely at odds with their corporate image. Weren't these the guys who aired the famous Super Bowl ads showing suited, blindfolded executives marching like lemmings off a cliff? Isn't this the company that even now runs ads picturing the Dalai Lama (except in Hong Kong) and Einstein and other offbeat rebels?
It is indeed the same company, and the fact that they have been able to plant this image of themselves as creative and rebellious free-thinkers in the minds of so many intelligent and media-hardened skeptics really gives one pause. It is testimony to the insidious power of expensive slick ad campaigns and, perhaps, to a certain amount of wishful thinking in the minds of people who fall for them. It also raises the question of why Microsoft is so bad at PR, when the history of Apple demonstrates that, by writing large checks to good ad agencies, you can plant a corporate image in the minds of intelligent people that is completely at odds with reality.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

"Class Struggle on the Desktop"
In the Beginning... was the Command Line (1999)

People, Guy, History, Intelligence

“The earlier political thinkers used the term "organization" in the broadest sense of the term, that is, with reference to the widest aspects of the patterns of political forces in a given state. Thus a political society might be organized as a monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, as a city-state, feudal state, a national state, imperial state, or a world state. Emphasis was also placed on the organs of organization. These came to be standardized in the course of time under the categories of legislative, executive, and judicial organs, the combination of which in some form of balance was held to be the indispensable basis of sound organization.”

Charles Edward Merriam (1874–1953) American political scientist

170 ; as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 220-1
Systematic Politics, 1943

World, Democracy, Sense, Time

“The relatively strong Jewish element in Hungary was a particular thorn in [Hitler's] flesh, especially as many Jews were eminent in Hungarian finance, commerce and industry, in the press and in the professions. Of course, the bourgeois middle classes cherished a feeling of resentment that the executive posts and the offices in the liberal professions most in demand were in Jewish hands. The Jews supported each other with the solidarity of their race and earned more than twenty-five percent of the national income. After the First World War, there had been a wave of open anti-Semitism in Hungary. Even writers with left-wing sympathies have pointed out that nine-tenths of the higher positions of Béla Kun’s regime were filled by Jews. It was, therefore, humanly understandable that the crimes of the Communists were attributed to the Jews. But the innate Hungarian sense of fairness and justice, strengthened by the efforts of both Catholic and Protestant Churches to suppress all forms of racial prejudice, soon re-established good relations between Jews and non-Jews.”

Miklós Horthy (1868–1957) Hungarian Admiral and Regent 1920-1944

Source: Memoirs, p. 208

War, World, Justice, Feeling

“Let us not deceive ourselves: our talent profile is nowhere near that of, say, the Jews or the Japanese in America. The exceptional number of Nobel Prize winners who are Jews is no accident. It is also no accident that a high percentage, sometimes 50%, of faculty members in the top American universities on both the east and west coasts are Jews. And the number of high calibre Japanese academics, professionals, and business executives is out of all proportion to the percentage of Japanese in the total American population”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

The Search for Talent, 12 August 1982 http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/speeches/record-details/73eb9163-115d-11e3-83d5-0050568939ad 1980s

Business, Universe

“The opposition of some executives to formalized organizational analysis stems in part from a reaction against the too zealous advocacy of organization as the universal panacea of all management ills. These executives correctly understand that organization is not the whole of management any more than personnel or budgeting or public relation. Organization analysis, therefore, is not properly the periodic pursuit of the expert; rather, it is the continuous responsibility of the executive. His clue is found in mal-functionings; not in the blind following of preconceived stereotypes.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: The Executive in Action, 1945, p. 53-4, as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 406

Understanding, Universe, Parting

“For example: (1) As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1989 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1989.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Law, Behavior, Business, Support

“[Culture] Jammers are now mobilizing to repeat the tobacco story in many other areas of life. We’re going to take on the global automakers, the chemical companies, the food industries, the fashion corporations and the pop-culture marketers in a free-information environment …We want auto executives to feel just as squeezed and beleaguered as tobacco executives. We want them to have a hard time looking their kids in the eye and explaining exactly what they do for a living.”

Kalle Lasn (1942) Estonian-Canadian film maker, author, magazine editor and activist

Cultural Jam (2000)

Life, Food, Feeling, Fashion

“The fact that the most arbitrary powers of the English executive must always be exercised under Act of Parliament places the government, even when armed with the widest authority, under the supervision, so to speak, of the Courts. Powers, however extraordinary, which are conferred or sanctioned by statute, are never really unlimited, for they are confined by the words of the Act itself, and, what is more, by the interpretation put upon the statute by the judges. Parliament is supreme legislator, but from the moment Parliament has uttered its will as lawgiver, that will becomes subject to the interpretation put upon it by the judges of the land.”

A. V. Dicey (1835–1922) British jurist and constitutional theorist

Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution [Eighth Edition, 1915] (LibertyClassics, 1982), p. 273.

Exercises

“Punk: Well, I've had six days to watch that scene over and over and over, and as painful as it was to watch, as painful it was to experience, I saw something more painful. Something caught my eye that was ten times more painful than my arm being mangled inside of a ladder while Alberto wrenched on it with his cross-armbreaker; it was more painful than Alberto butchering the English language; it was more painful than watching Miz [demonstrates] make his own bad-guy face, and his pathetic attempts to sound like a tough guy—"really? really?"—it was more painful than sitting through two hours of Michael Cole commentary as he struggles to sound relevant. No, I continued to watch Monday Night Raw, and what I saw was old clown shoes himself, the Executive Vice President of Talent Relations and Interim Raw General Manager, John Laurinaitis accept an award on my behalf. This wasn't just any award, it was the Slammy Award for Superstar of the Year, being accepted by a guy who's never been a superstar of thirty seconds. I mean, who's he ever beat? And I'm not a hard guy to find, I've yet to receive said Slammy. So what…[turns around and notices] oh. Speak of the devil. No, no, no, don't apologize. Where's my Slammy at?
Laurinaitis: Punk, I mailed your Slammy to you, but with the holiday season, it may take a while to get to you. But if I were you, I'd be more worried about your championship match tonight than your Slammy.
Punk: Well, if I were you, I'd wish myself best of luck in my future endeavors. But I don't expect you to do that; in fact, you wouldn't do that, just like I'm not gonna lose the Title tonight. So when TLC is over with, you're still gonna have to put up with CM Punk as your WWE Champion.
Laurinaitis: You know what, Punk? I'm gonna be the bigger man right now, okay? I mean, after all, I am taller than you. Good luck tonight, and merry Christmas.
Punk: Johnny, luck's for losers.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

TLC 2011
WWE Raw

Pain, Shoe, Guy, Time

“To say that I did not support the candidacy of Mr. Trump is the understatement of the year. I fiercely opposed it… I have criticized as unnecessary his policy on pausing immigration from certain countries, and I have criticized as weak to the point of meaningless his executive order on religious freedom. Indeed, I characterized it as a betrayal of his promise to reverse Obama era anti-religious-liberty policies. Donald Trump is not, and usually doesn't pretend to be, a man of strict or high principles… As a pragmatist, he doesn't have a governing philosophy — he's neither a conservative nor a liberal. On one day he'll give a speech to some evangelical pastors that makes him sound like a religious conservative, but the next day he'll lavishly praise Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is waging an all-out war on those who stand up for traditional moral values in Canada.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

2017, Interview with Matthew Bunson (2017)

War, Support, Freedom, Betrayal

“The acceptance of project management has not been easy, however. Many executives are not willing to accept change and are inflexible when it comes to adapting to a different environment.”

Harold Kerzner (1940) American engineer, management consultant

Source: Project management for executives (1982), p. 2

Change

“Since government supposedly can do whatever it sets out to do, the president should sign an executive order outlawing death. However, as with all other laws, Congress should be exempt.”

Harry Browne (1933–2006) American politician and writer

Source: Liberty A to Z (2004), p. 44

Death, Law

“I really don't know what to say about this without sounding hypercritical. First of all, the style of playing is so tremendously behind the beat, it gets to the point that I feel he's in opposition to his rhythm section, and I can't get a nice swing out of the thing. The pianist is tremendously heavy-handed, which I think gets in the way of what he's trying to do, so I feel that in some spots he's stumbling, instead of having the feeling that the man is executing what he wants to play. The whole thing strikes me as a sort of comme-ci-comme-ca performance of a like tune. Two stars.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing Dodo Marmarosa's recording of "Mellow Mood," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xieUt3PqGJ0 from the album Dodo's Back!; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe

Way, Feeling, Star, Thinking

“We know that the Egyptian priests were aware, not only that the soil beneath the plains of the Nile, but that also the hills bounding the great valley, contained marine shells; and it could hardly have escaped the observation of Eastern philosophers, that some soils were filled with fossil remains, since so many national works were executed on a magnificent scale by oriental monarchs in very remote eras.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 8
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

“The world 'bubble' is in the dictionary, as is the word 'peacock,' the word 'vacation,' and the words 'the,' 'author's,' 'execution,' 'has,' 'been,' 'cancelled,' which make up a sentence that is always pleasant to hear. So, if you were to read the dictionary, rather than this book, you could skip the parts about 'nervous' and 'anxious' and read about things that wouldn't keep you up all night, weeping and tearing your hair out. But this book is not a dictionary, and if you were to skip the parts about 'nervous' and 'anxious' you would be skipping the most pleasant parts of the entire story. Nowhere in this book will you find the words 'bubble,' 'peacock,' 'vacation,' or, unfortunately for me, anything about an execution being cancelled.”

Daniel Handler book The Ersatz Elevator

Lemony Snicket
The Ersatz Elevator (2001)

Books, World, Tear, Reading

“I was a vocal opponent of the George W. Bush Administration's decision to invade Iraq, a strategic blunder made worse by slapdash execution. As we have seen, this star-crossed action took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, breathed new life into a moribund al Qaeda, and enhanced Iranian influence in this critical region - all outcomes which damaged both the United States and our ally Israel.”

Merrill McPeak (1936) United States Air Force general

How to Secure Israel: Demilitarized land for peace is the key to a settlement (April 2008)

Life, Star, Decision

“[I]n the male sexual lexicon, which is the vocabulary of power, erotica is simply high-class pornography: better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer. As with the call girl and the streetwalker, one is turned out better but both are produced by the same system of sexual values and both perform the same sexual service.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

p 10.
Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Girl

“Judged by every standard which history has applied to Governments, the Soviet Government of Russia is one of the worst tyrannies that has ever existed in the world. (Cheers.) It accords no political rights. It rules by terror. It punishes political opinions. It suppresses free speech. It tolerates no newspapers but its own. It persecutes Christianity with a zeal and a cunning never equalled since the times of the Roman Emperors. It is engaged at this moment in trampling down the peoples of Georgia and executing their leaders by hundreds. It is for this process that Mr. MacDonald asks us to make ourselves responsible. We are to render these tyrannies possible by lending to their authors money to pay for the ammunition to murder the Georgians, to enable the Soviet sect to keep its stranglehold on the dumb Russian nation, and to poison the world, and so far as they can, the British Empire, with their filthy propaganda. (Cheers.) That is what we are asked to take upon ourselves. It is an outrage on the British name.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Edinburgh (25 September 1924), quoted in The Times (26 September 1924), p. 14
Early career years (1898–1929)

Money, People, World, History

“Monday was a dark day in American history. Tuning in to see the results of a much-maligned summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Americans were treated to one of the most disgusting sights imaginable: the chief executive of the United States of America licking the boots of a murderous dictator. … He stood on the world stage and sided with a man who has murdered dissidents and interfered with global democracy multiple times, and cast his lot with him over the country he’s supposed to serve. Donald Trump aided and abetted a foreign adversary.”

Jared Yates Sexton (1981)

About the 2018 Russia–United States summit, That was treason, Donald Trump. We all saw it https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-that-was-treason-donald-trump-we-all-saw-it/ (July 16, 2018), The Globe and Mail.

World, Democracy, Imagination, Time

“I would not execute [by firing squad] certain people. They should be hooked off their balls.”

Manuel Fraga Iribarne (1922–2012) Spanish politician

Fraga's answer to "Are you as a professor against the death penalty?" Mor al llit, impunement, Manuel Fraga, icona del franquisme i responsable dels assassinats de Gasteiz, 16th January 2012, Setmanari La Directa, 16th January 2012, catalan http://www.setmanaridirecta.info/noticia/noticia-fraga, Franco and Francoism

People

“[Saddam Hussein's execution] was a disaster, an unmitigated disaster. I was just so upset, even on the verge of tears. It was the antithesis of everything I had been working for and hoping for.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Edward Wong Interviews Kanan Makiya: Critic of Hussein Grapples with Horrors of Post Invasion Iraq", New York Times (March 25, 2007)

Hope, Tear

“The significance of Jesus Christ as the "faithful and true witness" is that He not only witnesses against those who are at war against God, but He also executes them.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), p. 574

God, War, Faith, Christ

“Something must be done, and that speedily, to bridge the widening chasm between the Executive and the Congress. Our experience with President Wilson has demonstrated this. As a self-centered autocrat, confident of himself and suspicious of others, hostile to advice or discussion, he became the absolute master of the Congress while his party was in the majority. The Congress, instead of being a co-ordinate branch, was really in session only to accept, adopt and put into laws the imperious will of the president. When, however, the majority changed, there being no confidence between the executive and the legislative branch of the government, the necessary procedure was almost paralyzed. The president was unyielding and the Congress insisted upon the recognition of its constitutional rights. Even if the president is, as McKinley was, in close and frequent touch with the Senate and the House of Representatives, the relation is temporary and unequal, and not what it out to be, automatic. Happily we have started a budget system; but the Cabinet should have seats on the floor of the Houses, and authority to answer questions and participate in debates.”

Chauncey Depew (1834–1928) American politician

My Memories of Eighty Years (1922), p. 189

Hostility, Law, Confidence, Question

“.. the Place de l'Opera [in Paris] gives a better image of the new life than many theories. Its rhythms of opposition, twice repeated in its two directions, realizes a living equilibrium through the exactness of its execution.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote of Mondrian before 1930; as cited in 'The New Art – The New Life', Piet Mondrian, op. cit. Introd. Note 1., 1931
1930's

Life

“For more than six hundred years—that is, since the Magna Carta in 1215—there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge, what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust, oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

An Essay on the Trial by Jury, Boston, MA: John P. Jewett and Company, Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington (1852) p. 5

Justice, Law, Personality

“In the year AH 817 (AD 1414), Mullik Tohfa, one of the Officers of the King’s government was ennobled by the title of Taj-ool-Moolk, and received a special commission to destroy all idolatrous temples, and establish the Mahomedan authority throughout Guzerat; a duty which he executed with such diligence, that the names of Mawass and Girass were hereafter unheard of in the whole kingdom.”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Ahmad Shãh I of Gujrat (AD 1411-1443)General order
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

“He knows the entire land, there is not a stain on him, he is blemishless, has vast administrative experience having served in various [c]abinets, and fulfilled his responsibilities to everyone's satisfaction, whether it was as the chief executive of the Delhi metropolitan council or as information and broadcasting minister or deputy prime minister. Advaniji rose from the ranks to become a mass leader, there's a world of difference between the two.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2009, "The nation is waiting for a strong, experienced leader", 2009

World

“It is the old, old worry: will the British people perceive in time what is happening to them and where they are being taken? If they do, I am not afraid for the outcome. But will they? … referendum day is certainly not the last chance, because I am sure that, if the result is interpreted as sanctioning Stay In, the events of the following months will open many eyes that are closed at present. Perhaps, however, I might express it this way: if referendum day is not September, 1939, at any rate it is September, 1938. The nation is being invited to confirm the surrender, and the permanent surrender, of its most precious possession: its political independence and parliamentary self-government, and the right to live under laws and to pay taxes authorized only by Parliament and to be governed by policies for which the executive is fully accountable through Parliament to the electorate. Above and beyond all the arguments about butter mountains and Brussels bureaucrats there lies that stark fact, undenied and undeniable.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

'The one stark fact', The Times (4 June 1975), p. 14
1970s

People, Law, Way, Mountain

“When finally our Constitution was adopted, it contained specific provision that the President and members of the Congress and of state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officials, should be qualified for the discharge of their office by oath or affirmation. By the statute law of the United States, and I doubt not by all States, such oaths are administered by a solemn appeal to God for help in the keeping of their covenants. I scarcely need to refer to the fact that the houses of the Congress, and so far as I know the state legislatures, open their daily sessions with prayer. The foundation of our independence and our Government rests upon our basic religious convictions. Back of the authority of our laws is the authority of the Supreme Judge of the World, to whom we still appeal for their final justification.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

God, World, Law, Help

“The basic principal of this government is the will of the people. A system was devised by its founders which seemed to insure the means of ascertaining that will and of enacting it into legislation and supporting it through the administration of the law. This was to be accomplished by electing men to make, and men to execute the laws, who, would represent in the laws so made and executed the will of the people. This was the establishment of a representative government, where every man had equal voice, equal rights, and equal responsibilities. Have we such a government today? Or is this country fast coming to be dominated by forces that threaten the true principle of representative government?”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

“The Danger Threatening Representative Government” Speech (1897) http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/pdfs/lessons/EDU-SpeechTranscript-SpeechesLaFollette-DangerThreatening.pdf

Men, People, Law, Support

“The new "ambiguity" means, in a way adjudged favorable to literary, poetic, intellectually and psychologically well-devised and praiseworthily executed linguistic performance, uncertainty of meaning, or difficulty for the interpreter in identifying just what the meaning in question is: it means the old meanings of ambiguity with a difference. It means uncertainty of meaning (of a word or combination of words) purposefully incorporated in a literary composition for the attainment of the utmost possible variety of meaning-play compressible within the verbal limits of the composition.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"On Ambiguity" in Rational Meaning and Supplementary Essays (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997).

Way, Question

“Dimock makes the generalization that 90 percent of the characteristics of public government executive management are identical with those of private executive management. In spite of large areas of similarity, I strongly dissent. I would place the percentage very much lower - whether 30 per cent or SO per cent lower, I shall not attempt to say.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

Source: "Governmental and Business Executives", 1946, p. 176; cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 194-5

“In Flossenbürg, you noticed things more; you had to notice every day so many people hanged in the courtyard. People were brought to their execution completely naked. They were driven into the courtyard and I could hear the noise of naked feet on the court ground right outside my window. Stretchers with corpses were carried past the doors of our cells. If by chance the peek holes were open, one could see them going by. In the courtyard where you took a walk, they had gallows arranged in such a way that you were obliged to look at them.”

Franz Halder (1884–1972) German general

To Leon Goldensohn, April 5, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.
Sourced Encyclopedia of the Third Reich Louis L. Snyder

People, Way, Chance, Past

“Simple-minded beyond the experience of Wall Street or State Street, he resorted, like most men of the same intellectual calibre, to commonplaces when at a loss for expression: "Let us have peace!" or, "The best way to treat a bad law is to execute it"; or a score of such reversible sentences generally to be gauged by their sententiousness.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Men, Peace, Law, Way

“The bell. It was already time to part, to go to bed. The bell regulated everything. It gave me orders and I executed them blindly. I hated that bell. Whenever I happened to dream of a better world, I imagined a universe without a bell.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Hate, World, Dreams, Imagination

“And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.”

Malvina Reynolds (1900–1978) American folk singer

Song Little Boxes

Business

“I am not gonna die because some network executive thought I was fat! It's so wrong! It's so wrong that women are asked to live up to this skinny ideal that is totally unattainable. For me to be ten pounds thinner is a full-time job, and I am handing in my notice and walking out the door!!”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, I'm The One That I Want Tour

Women, Time

“A leader must keep his or her eye on the core customers and core business. I have seen many executives focus so much on new growth that they let the core business slip away.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 178. On Leading Well

Business

“The correct relationship between the higher and lower classes, the appropriate mutual interaction between the two is, as such, the true underlying support on which the improvement of the human species rests. The higher classes constitute the mind of the single large whole of humanity; the lower classes constitute its limbs; the former are the thinking and designing [Entwerfende] part, the latter the executive part.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

The System of Ethics According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1798; Cambridge, 2005), p. 320.

Support, Thinking, Parting

“Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stand on the right spot; that it be securely founded; that it be successfully executed.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

Bk. I, Ch. 9
Elective Affinities (1809)

“The executions of agents, partisans, saboteurs, suspicious people, indulging in espionage and sabotage, and those who were of a detrimental effect to the German Army, were, in my opinion, completely in accordance with the Hague Convention.”

Paul Blobel (1894–1951) German SS officer and Holocaust perpetrator

Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 153 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

People

“The executive branch has sometimes abused its mandate -- most famously, with the surveillance of Dr. King -- but not as much as the Church Committee would have us believe. The FBI's political spying was not the creation of right-wing reactionaries, and it was not systematically targeted at the innocent grassroots left. It was begun by our most liberal of presidents, FDR, who ordered the surveillance of fascist sympathizers in 1936. The most controversial domestic Counterinteligence Programs (Cointelpro) were actually born in the Kennedy administration, as an attempt to disrupt the Ku Klux Klan. The FBI also disrupted "Black Nationalist Hate Groups," including the Black Panthers. This was not political repression; it was a largely successful effort to deal with violent militant groups.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Uncuff the FBI: Congress Must Undo the Church Committe's Damage (2002)

Hate, Effort, Success

“Even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its members (e. g., if a people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse throughout the world), the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that each has done to him what his deeds deserve and blood guilt does not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punishment; for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators in his public violation of justice.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kt6:333
Metaphysics of Morals (1797)

People, World, Justice

“What makes anyone think [Apple Watch is] going to "disrupt" anything, other than the careers of the people who planned and executed that abortion?”

Karl Denninger American businessman

The iSnicker http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229422 in The Market Ticker (19 September 2014)

People, Thinking

“…the company must not throw money away on huge bonuses for executives or other frivolities but must share its fate with the workers.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 187.

Money, Fate

“I will propose a Highway Safety Act of 1966 to seek an end to this mounting tragedy. We must also act to prevent the deception of the American consumer—requiring all packages to state clearly and truthfully their contents—all interest and credit charges to be fully revealed—and keeping harmful drugs and cosmetics away from our stores. It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention. We must change to master change. I propose to take steps to modernize and streamline the executive branch, to modernize the relations between city and state and nation. A new Department of Transportation is needed to bring together our transportation activities. The present structure—35 government agencies, spending $5 billion yearly—makes it almost impossible to serve either the growing demands of this great nation or the needs of the industry, or the right of the taxpayer to full efficiency and real frugality. I will propose in addition a program to construct and to flight-test a new supersonic transport airplane that will fly three times the speed of sound—in excess of 2,000 miles per hour. I propose to examine our federal system-the relation between city, state, nation, and the citizens themselves. We need a commission of the most distinguished scholars and men of public affairs to do this job. I will ask them to move on to develop a creative federalism to best use the wonderful diversity of our institutions and our people to solve the problems and to fulfill the dreams of the American people. As the process of election becomes more complex and more costly, we must make it possible for those without personal wealth to enter public life without being obligated to a few large contributors. Therefore, I will submit legislation to revise the present unrealistic restriction on contributions—to prohibit the endless proliferation of committees, bringing local and state committees under the act—to attach strong teeth and severe penalties to the requirement of full disclosure of contributions—and to broaden the participation of the people, through added tax incentives, to stimulate small contributions to the party and to the candidate of their choice.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life, Men, People, Penalty

“Before that kafir [Guru Arjun Deva] was executed this recluse [meaning himself] had seen in a dream that the reigning king had smashed the skull of idolatry. Indeed, he was a great idolater, and the leader of the idolaters, and the chief of unbelievers. May Allah blast him! The Holy Prophet who is the ruler of religion as well as the world, has cursed the idolaters as follows in some of his prayers – “O Allah, demean their society, create divisions in their ranks, destroy their homes, and get at them like the mighty one.”
It is required by religion [Islam] that jihad should be waged against the unbelievers, and that they should be dealt with harshly… It is obligatory on Muslims to acquaint the king of Islam with the evil customs of false religions… Maybe the king has no knowledge of these evil customs… Some Ulama of Islam should come forward, and proclaim the evils present in their (unbelievers’) ways… It will be no excuse on the Day of Judgment that they did not proclaim the tenets of the Shariat because they were not called upon (to do so)…”

Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624) Indian philosopher

Maktubat-i-Imam Rabbani translated into Urdu by Maulana Muhammad Sa’id Ahmad Naqshbandi, Deoband, 1988, Volume I, pp.435-36. This letter was written to Shaikh Farid.
From his letters

World, Religion, Dreams, Way

“We do not want sentence of death with a stay of execution for six years.”

Edward Carson, Baron Carson (1854–1935) Irish politician, barrister and judge

Speech in the House of Commons against a Government amendment allowing each county of Ulster to opt out of Home Rule for six years, 9 March 1914.

Death

“Our Constitution has given us the framework for a strong nation, a Union of States; a nation of harmony between the Union and States and between the various institutions of our democratic polity. We can claim to have achieved significant success in the diverse and inter-connected spheres of democratic governance, our Parliament, the Executive and the Judiciary. The philosophy of the Constitution nurtures a polity where the precepts and practices of democracy can become second nature to the people. Through the elections to eleven Lok Sabhas, the people of India have repeatedly displayed their determination to fulfil their duties as responsible citizens of the Republic.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

Address By Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma President Of India On The Occasion Of The 50th Anniversary Of The First Sitting Of The Constituent Assembly

People, Democracy, Nature, Strong

“Complexity. In general individual decision makers must be assumed to have multidimensional values which attach nonmonetary subjective cost or value to (1) the process of making and executing individual or group decisions, (2) the end result of such decisions, and (3) the rewards (and perhaps behavior) of other individuals involved in the decision process.”

Vernon L. Smith (1927) American economist

Source: "Relevance of laboratory experiments to testing resource allocation theory," 1980, p. 348.

Behavior, Decision

“In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.
By virtue of the first, the prince or magistrate enacts temporary or perpetual laws, and amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted. By the second, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and provides against invasions. By the third, he punishes criminals, or determines the disputes that arise between individuals. The latter we shall call the judiciary power, and the other, simply, the executive power of the state.
When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
Again, there is no liberty if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.
There would be an end of every thing, were the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.
The executive power ought to be in the hands of a monarch, because this branch of government, having need of dispatch, is better administered by one than by many: on the other hand, whatever depends on the legislative power, is oftentimes better regulated by many than by a single person.
But, if there were no monarch, and the executive power should be committed to a certain number of persons, selected from the legislative body, there would be an end of liberty, by reason the two powers would be united; as the same persons would sometimes possess, and would be always able to possess, a share in both.”

Montesquieu book The Spirit of the Laws

Book XI, Chapter 6. The Spirit of the Laws (1748) Source: Esprit des lois (1777)/L11/C6 - Wikisource, fr.wikisource.org, fr, 2018-07-07 https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Esprit_des_lois_(1777)/L11/C6,

Life, War, People, Peace

“We in America should see that no man is ever given, no matter how gradually or how noble and excellent the man, the power to put this country into a war which is now being prepared and brought closer each day with all the pre-meditation of a long planned murder. For when you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Notes on the Next War (1935)

War, Time, Country

“Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy and consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. IX: Of the Sons of Master and Man

Men, People, Justice, Law

“The clean power plan is something that Senator Sanders has said he would delay implementing, which makes absolutely no sense. We need to implement all of the president’s executive actions and quickly move to make a bridge from coal to natural gas to clean energy. That is the way we will keep the lights on while we are transitioning to a clean energy future. And when I talk about resilience, I think that is an area we can get Republican support on.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Way, Support, Nature, Thinking

“Osama bin Laden’s welcome death has ignited debate over whether the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners were instrumental in locating bin Laden, and whether they are a justifiable means for gathering intelligence.
Much of this debate is a definitional one: whether any or all of these methods constitute torture. I believe some of them do, especially waterboarding, which is a mock execution and thus an exquisite form of torture. As such, they are prohibited by American laws and values, and I oppose them. … Mistreatment of enemy prisoners endangers our own troops, who might someday be held captive. While some enemies, and al-Qaeda surely, will never be bound by the principle of reciprocity, we should have concern for those Americans captured by more conventional enemies, if not in this war then in the next.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

"Bin Laden’s death and the debate over torture" in The Washington Post (11 May 2011) http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bin-ladens-death-and-the-debate-over-torture/2011/05/11/AFd1mdsG_story.html 2010s, 2011

Death, War, Law, Intelligence

“With Rahm, you get someone who is both a great strategic thinker and a great tactician. It's great to have someone who knows the Congress inside and out. There can often be major differences between the executive branch and the congressional branch, even when you're from the same party. It will certainly help in terms of getting things done.”

Rahm Emanuel (1959) politician, investment banker, White House Chief of Staff

Chris Van Hollen, quoted in San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/06/MN6C13VKH5.DTL&type=politics. About

Help

“People who get higher pay are more willing to relocate--especially to undesirable locations at the company's behest… A corporate secretary may change companies in the same town; a corporate executive is more likely to change towns with the same company. A talented corporate secretary sees an invitation to relocate as an invitation; a future corporate executive sees an invitation to relocate as an opportunity--and an obligation.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 93-94.

People, Change, Future

“I am so confined, writing passes, etc., that it is impossible for me to attend to the duties of the day, which, in many instances, prejudices the service. Such a confined situation leaves one no opportunity of viewing things for themselves. It is recommended, by one of the greatest Generals of the age, not only to issue orders, but to see to the execution; for the army being composed of men of indolence, if the commander is not attentive to every individual in the different departments, the machine becomes dislocated, and the progress of business retarded.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (July 1776)

Men, Age, Business

“The spark within is akin to the Divine Ground. By identifying ourselves with the first we can come to unitive knowledge of the second. These empirical facts of the spiritual life have been variously rationalized in terms of the theologies of the various religions. The Hindus categorically affirm that Thou art That — that the indwelling Atman is the same as Brahman. For orthodox Christianity there is not an identity between the spark and God. Union of the human spirit with God takes place — union so complete that the word deification is applied to it; but it is not the union of identical substances. According to Christian theology, the saint is “deified,” not because Atman is Brahman, but because God has assimilated the purified human spirit in to the divine substance by an act of grace. Islamic theology seems to make a similar distinction. The Sufi, Mansur, was executed for giving to the words “union” and “deification” the literal meaning which they bear in the Hindu tradition. For our present purposes, however, the significant fact is that these words are actually used by Christians and Mohammedans to describe the empirical facts of metaphysical realization by means of direct, super-rational intuition.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita (1944)

Life, God, Religion, Art

“The precision provided (or enforced) by programming languages and their execution can identify lacunas, ambiguities, and other areas of potential confusion in conventional [mathematical] notation.”

Kenneth E. Iverson (1920–2004) Canadian computer scientist

Source: Math for the Layman (1999), Ch. 10, §D

Mathematics

“It's not easy for (Minister of Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China) Zhang (Zhijun) to openly address me by my official title (Minister of the Mainland Affairs Council of the Executive Yuan of the Republic of China).”

Wang Yu-chi (1969) Taiwanese politician

Wang Yu-chi (2013) cited in " MAC chief hails progress in 'special' cross-strait ties http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20131012000033&cid=1101" on Want China Times, 12 October 2013

People

“In England, where judges were named and removable at the will of an hereditary executive, from which branch most misrule was feared, and has flowed, it was a great point gained, by fixing them for life, to make them independent of that executive. But in a government founded on the public will, this principle operates in an opposite direction, and against that will. There, too, they were still removable on a concurrence of the executive and legislative branches. But we have made them independent of the nation itself. They are irremovable, but by their own body, for any depravities of conduct, and even by their own body for the imbecilities of dotage. The justices of the inferior courts are self- chosen, are for life, and perpetuate their own body in succession forever, so that a faction once possessing themselves of the bench of a county, can never be broken up, but hold their county in chains, forever indissoluble. Yet these justices are the real executive as well as judiciary, in all our minor and most ordinary concerns. They tax us at will; fill the office of sheriff, the most important of all the executive officers of the county; name nearly all our military leaders, which leaders, once named, are removable but by themselves. The juries, our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it, are not selected by the people, nor amenable to them. They are chosen by an officer named by the court and executive. Chosen, did I say? Picked up by the sheriff from the loungings of the court yard, after everything respectable has retired from it. Where then is our republicanism to be found? Not in our constitution certainly, but merely in the spirit of our people. That would oblige even a despot to govern us republicanly. Owing to this spirit, and to nothing in the form of our constitution, all things have gone well. But this fact, so triumphantly misquoted by the enemies of reformation, is not the fruit of our constitution, but has prevailed in spite of it. Our functionaries have done well, because generally honest men. If any were not so, they feared to show it.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1810s, Letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval) (1816)

Life, Men, People, Fear

“To the humanistic mind these penalties seem severe and unnecessary. In actuality, the penalties, together with the Biblical faith which motivated them, worked to reduce crime. Thus, when New England passed laws requiring the death penalty for incorrigible delinquents and for children who struck their parents, no executions were necessary: the law kept the children in line.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), p. 236

Death, Children, Faith, Law

“You were compelled to?' he repeated. 'You mean you weren't sufficiently powerful to resist?'
'In order to seize power,' replied the dictator, 'I had to take it from those that had it, and in order to keep it I had to employ it against those that sought to deprive me of it.'
The chef's hat gave a nod. 'An old, old story. It has been repeated a thousand times, but no one believes it. That's why it will be repeated a thousand times more.'
The dictator felt suddenly exhausted. He would gladly have sat down to rest, but the old man and the children walked on and he followed them.
'What about you?' he blurted out, when he had caught the old man up. 'What do you know of power? Do you seriously believe that anything great can be achieved on earth without it?'
'I?' said the old man. 'I cannot tell great from small.'
'I wanted power so that I could give the world justice,' bellowed the dictator, and blood began to trickle afresh from the wound in his forehead, 'but to get it I had to commit injustice, like anyone who seeks power. I wanted to end oppression, but to do so I had to imprison and execute those who opposed me - I became an oppressor despite myself. To abolish violence we must use it, to eliminate human misery we must inflict it, to render war impossible we must wage it, to save the world we must destroy it. Such is the true nature of power.'
Chest heaving, he had once more barred the old man's path with his pistol ready.'
'Yet you love it still,' the old man said softly.
'Power is the supreme virture!' The dictator's voice quavered and broke. 'But its sole shortcoming is sufficient to spoil the whole: it can never be absolute - that's what makes it so insatiable. The only true form of power is omnipotence, which can never be attained, hence my disenchantment with it. Power has cheated me.'
'And so,' said the old man, 'you have become the very person you set out to fight. It happens again and again. That is why you cannot die.'
The dictator slowly lowered his gun. 'Yes,' he said, 'you're right. What's to be done?'
'Do you know the legend of the Happy Monarch?' asked the old man.
…
'When the Happy Monarch came to build the huge, mysterious palace whose planning alone had occupied ten whole years of his life, and to which marvelling crowds made pilgrimage long before its completion, he did something strange. No one will ever know for sure what made him do it, whether wisdom or self-hatred, but the night after the foundation stone had been laid, when the site was dark and deserted, he went there in secret and buried a termites' nest in a pit beneath the foundation stone itself. Many decades later - almost a life time had elapsed, and the many vicissitudes of his turbulent reign had long since banished all thought of the termites from his mind - when the unique building was finished at last and he, its architect and author, first set foot on the battlements of the topmost tower, the termites, too, completed their unseen work. We have no record of any last words that might shed light on his motives, because he and all his courtiers were buried in the dust and rubble of the fallen palace, but long-enduring legend has it that, when his almost unmarked body was finally unearthed, his face wore a happy smile.”

Michael Ende (1929–1995) German author

"Mirror in the Mirror", page 193

Love, Life, Wisdom, War

“Practically all we know is that thousands of native Haitians have been killed by American Marines, and that many of our own gallant men have sacrificed their lives at the behest of an Executive department in order to establish laws drafted by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. … I will not empower an Assistant Secretary of the Navy to draft a constitution for helpless neighbors in the West Indies and jam it down their throats at the point of bayonets borne by U. S. Marines.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

Speech during Warren Harding's 1920 presidental campaign, critizing Woodrow Wilson's Haitian policies; quoted in Democracy at the Point of Bayonets (1999) by Mark Penceny, p. 2. (The Assistant Secretary of the Navy he refers to is Franklin Roosevelt, who was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1920).
1920s

Men, Law

“Relentless execution without knowing what to execute is a crime.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 11.

“I was astonished to be invited to what became the meeting that originated the Agile Manifesto because my work had always been based around building models… The other signatories were kind enough, back in 2001, to write the manifesto using the word “software” (which can include executable models), not “code” (which is more specific.) As such I felt able, in good conscience, to become a signatory to the Manifesto while continuing to promote executable modeling. Ten years on we have a standard action language for agile modeling.”

Stephen J. Mellor (1952) British computer scientist

Mellor (2011) " A Personal Reflection on Agile Ten Years On http://www.infoq.com/articles/personal-reflection-agile-ten-years-mellor" in: InfoQ, Feb 11, 2011.