A Quote by John C. Calhoun
We make a great mistake in supposing all people are capable of self-government.
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Do we really think that a government-dominated education is going to produce citizens capable of dominating their government, as the education of a truly vigilant self-governing people requires?
The Philippines are ours forever. They are not capable of self-government. How could they be? They are not a self-governing race.
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.
I've always felt like we're all human beings and we're all basically given the tools to make whatever choices we want to make. How we treat other people. How we treat ourselves. Just the whole philosophy of that and the philosophical logic of that is that we're all capable of great acts of evil, and we're all capable of great acts of good.
There is some who say that perhaps freedom is not universal. Maybe it's only Western people that can self-govern. Maybe it's only, you know, white-guy Methodists who are capable of self-government. I reject that notion.
After a great save or a mistake by a defender, I prefer not to shout on him; I prefer to wait and say it inside of the dressing room. I was always like that. I am relaxed, I try to be normal after a mistake, and when I make a mistake, I don't want people coming to me on the pitch shouting at me.
If you are walking backward, away from something you think is a mistake, you may be right in supposing it is a mistake, but for you to be walking backward is never right. You know what happens to people who walk backward.... We are meant to walk forward, not backward, and reaction is always a matter of walking backward.
Make no mistake about it, my friends - Republicans, the American people are never going to forget that it was you who shut down the government of the people.
If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self.
New Labour was the most short-sighted, self-serving, incompetent, useless, and ineffective government that Britain has ever known. Make no mistake, Labour's economic policies were a national security liability.
Marriage was contrived for ordinary people, for people who are capable of neither great love nor great friendship, which is to say, for most people--but also for those exceptionally rare ones who are capable of love as well as of friendship.
We don't want to make a mistake. Would you rather make the mistake and err on the side of caution or wait until something happens and then answer to the American people, why you didn't vet these people properly?
It is right noble to fight with wickedness and wrong; the mistake is in supposing that spiritual evil can be overcome by physical means.
There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('man's search for God'!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?
I would fain ask one of these bigotted Infidels, supposing all the great Points of Atheism... were laid together and formed into a kind of Creed, according to the Opinions of the most celebrated Atheists; I say, supposing such a Creed as this were formed, and imposed upon any one People in the World, whether it would not require an infinitely greater Measure of Faith, than any Set of Articles which they so violently oppose.
And learn that when you do make a mistake, you'll surface that mistake so you can get it corrected, rather than trying to hide it and bury it, and it becomes a much bigger mistake, and maybe a fatal mistake.
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