“States are doomed when they are unable to distinguish good men from bad.”

Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, “Unlimited Government” (Dec. 29, 1961).

Source: Fourth Mansions (1969), Ch. 4
Context: "There was a later time when sincere men tried to build an organization as wide as the world to secure the peace of the world. It had been tried before and it had failed before. Perhaps if it failed this time it would not be tried again for a very long while. The idea of the thing was attacked by good and bad men, in good faith and bad. The final realization of it was so close that it could be touched with the fingertips. A gambler wouldn't have given odds on it either way. It teetered, and it almost seemed as though it would succeed. Then members of that group interfered."
"And it failed, O'Claire?"
"No. It succeeded, Foley, as in the other case. It succeeded in so twisted a fashion that the Devil himself was puzzled as to whether he had gained or lost ground by it. And he isn't easily puzzled."

undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)

Alan Simpson (b. 1912), an English born educator who became a U.S. citizen in 1954, in "The Marks of an Educated Man" in Readings for Liberal Education (1962), edited by by Louis Glenn Locke, William Merriam Gibson, and George Warren Arms, p. 47.
Misattributed

Source: The Great Divorce (1944–1945), Ch. 11

Jimmy Wales on tech's future, Orlando Sentinel http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2007-11-03/business/horowitz03_1_wikipedia-jimmy-wales-copyright (03 November 2007)

Source: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling