On Politics - from Pericles to Lord Acton
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Having knowledge but lacking the power to express it clearly is no better than never having any ideas at all. - Pericles
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Time is the wisest counsellor of all. - Pericles
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Trees, though they are cut and loped, grow up again quickly, but if men are destroyed, it is not easy to get them again. - Pericles
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We are imperfect. We cannot expect perfect government. - William Howard Taft
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It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. - Thomas Jefferson
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Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good. - H.L. Mencken
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Democracy is an experiment, and the right of the majority to rule is no more inherent than the right of the minority to rule; and unless the majority represents sane, righteous, unselfish public sentiment, it has no inherent right. - William Allen White
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Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else. - Nicolas Walter
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Government is an unnecessary evil. Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness. - Fred Woodworth
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If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary; if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also. - Fred Woodworth
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For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. - Jonathan Swift
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Information is the currency of democracy. - Thomas Jefferson
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Democracy is like a raft: It won’t sink, but you will always have your feet wet. - Russell B. Long
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In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock. – Orson Wells
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The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. - Lord Acton
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