“Trusting government nowadays means dividing humanity into two classes: those who can be trusted with power to run other people’s lives, and those who cannot even be trusted to run their own lives.”

— James Bovard

From Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin's Press, 1999) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigram%20page%20Freedom%20in%20Chains.htm

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James Bovard40

American journalist 1956

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

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“The collectivity is divided into two classes of people: those who, by virtue of their ownership of the means of doing, command others to do, and those who, by virtue of the fact that they are deprived of access to the means of doing, do what the others tell them to do.”

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Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

“I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.”

Christopher Hampton (1946) British playwright, screenwriter and film director

Don, in The Philanthropist (1969), scene 6

“Those who trust us educate us.”

George Eliot book Daniel Deronda

Source: Daniel Deronda (1876)

“Trust those who seek the truth but doubt those who say they have found it.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Variant: Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it
Context: Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.