The responsibility for good government lies not just with governments themselves but also with every other part of the system they operate in, including media, non-governmental organisations and the public.
This weakening is worsened by the widening distance between the governed and their governments.
Time and again these governments have rejected proposals today - and longed for them tomorrow.
It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.
It was very important for us to hear that both European governments and the IMF are going to sustain and augment their commitment to Greece because they don't pursue the debt reduction route. They're actually extending more debt, more loans to Greece.
The first piece of advice I would have from my experience is that governments need to be vocal about human rights.
A majority of American citizens are now becoming skeptical of the claim that our carbon footprints, resulting from our use of fossil fuels, are going to lead to climatic calamities. But governments are not yet listening to the citizens.
Provincial governments in Canada have terminated the positions of marriage commissioners who have, for personal religious convictions, not performed same sex marriages. It has happened in Saskatchewan.
In the U.K., the history of regulation, certainly regulation of the media, is one in which, time and again, successive governments lacked the 'bottle' to enforce the powers that were available to them.
Today, the people are governing the governments. And when they begin to talk to each other, they are surprised, they can be friends. Why should we hate each other?
If the world's using bitcoin, governments won't be able to fund wars through inflation like they do today.
It is all too evident that our nation, and the governments of other countries, require all the help they can get in order to fight the War on Terrorism against people who have no qualms about taking the lives of innocent men, women, and children.
Clear limits should be set on how power is exercised in cyberspace by companies as well as governments through the democratic political process and enforced through law.
Governments should want and even crave the best possible scientific advice. With reliable knowledge come better decisions, fewer mistakes and more results achieved for each pound spent.
If governments want to encourage good citizenship, they should try making the desired behavior more fun.
We've seen a massive attack on the freedom of the web. Governments are realizing the power of this medium to organize people and they are trying to clamp down across the world, not just in places like China and North Korea; we're seeing bills in the United States, in Italy, all across the world.
The 1 to 2 billion poorest in the world, who don't have food for the day, suffer from the worst disease: globalization deficiency. The way globalization is occurring could be much better, but the worst thing is not being part of it. For those people, we need to support good civil societies and governments.
Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.
There is a basic lesson on financial crises that governments tend to wait too long, underestimate the risks, want to do too little. And it ultimately gets away from them, and they end up spending more money, causing much more damage to the economy.
During the Cold War, the U.S. instituted a policy of sending money to governments in poor countries to buy their political loyalty. While studies show that sending aid to foreign governments creates allegiance, it does not lead to economic progress.
In this most powerful nation in the world, lack of access to health care should not force local and state governments, companies and workers into bankruptcy, while causing unnecessary illness and hospitalization.
Climate change is such a huge issue that it requires strong, concerted, consistent and enduring action by governments.
Are governments the only entities that can build human spacecraft? No - actually, every human spacecraft ever built for NASA was built by private industry.
I am well aware of the facts presented by numerous security experts on the many ways in which the United States' digital networks have come under siege by cybercriminals and under daily assault by hackers in league with various foreign governments.
Surrounded by military airplanes and warships from the world's most civilized and developed nations, we have been denied permission by friendly governments, for reasons of security, to land anywhere, but in the tiny, and still neutral, Republic of Djibouti.
By creating a Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District, we will give local governments a framework for working together on an issue that affects our whole state.
Globalisation makes it clear that social responsibility is required not only of governments, but of companies and individuals. All sources must interact in order to reach the MDGs.
Governments are composed of human beings, and all of the frailties that humans possess are absorbed into these governments and become active within these governments. Hatred, anger, jealousy, fear, greed, distrust and the whole host of afflictions that humans must bear, lurk just beneath the surface of civility displayed by 'government.'
Expanding eligibility of family planning services to low-income women will maximize cost-savings to both federal and state governments, reduce the disparities in access to family planning services for low-income women, and decrease the incidence of abortion in the U.S.
The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax us citizens for our carbon footprints.
So, I am independently well-off and don't have to do anything, but I still do. I write books, lecture around the world, work with scientists and governments.
International institutions are composed of governments. Governments control their own military forces and police.
Governments that invest billions in new hardware still find it hard to accept that they might benefit just as much from systematic innovation in such things as child development or cutting crime.
In the 1990s, the Lib Dems won a string of byelections at the expense of struggling Conservative governments. Christchurch, Ribble Valley and Eastbourne went straight back to the Tories at the next general election, but the Lib Dems held their later byelection gains - Eastleigh, Newbury and Romsey - in at least two subsequent general elections.
All governments should be pressured to correct their abuses of human rights.
Many people and governments share the mistaken belief that science, with new, ingenious devices and techniques, can rescue us from the troubles we face without our having to mend our ways and change our patterns of activity. This is not so.
