“A country that believes it has never done any wrong is a country that could do wrong at any time. But a country that believes it has only done wrong, or done such a terrible, unalleviated amount of wrong in the past, is likely to become a country that is inclined to doubt its ability to ever do any good in the future.”
The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017)
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Douglas Murray 18
British political commentator and far-right activist 1979Related quotes

Reported by Representative Martin Dies as having been said in a conversation at the White House, in the Congressional Record (September 22, 1950), vol. 96, Appendix, p. A6832. Reported as "exceedingly dubious" in Paul F. Boller, Jr., Quotemanship: The Use and Abuse of Quotations for Polemical and Other Purposes, chapter 8, p. 361 (1967); Boller goes on to say that "it is most unlikely that FDR would have said anything like it, even flippantly, to the zealous HUAC chairman, though he may have told Dies that he was exaggerating the size of the American communist movement".
Misattributed

As cited in: " The Great Transition http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/enterprise-design/the-great-transition-8696" Jurgens Pieterse April 7, 2006
The great transition (1995)

"Out of Context" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell060209.php3, Jewish World Review, 2 June 2009.
2000s

On Good Morning Britain speaking about his view of tax avoidance schemes and if Gary Barlow should give back his OBE following claims that the singer took part in one - Prime Minister David Cameron speaks to Good Morning Britain, ITV (12 May 2014) http://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/prime-minister-david-cameron-speaks-good-morning-britain
2010s, 2014

Morarji Desai speaks about life and celibacy

“Let the wrong which is done by a man stay there where the wrong was done.”
VII, 29
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII
Context: Wipe out the imagination. Stop pulling the strings. Confine thyself to the present.... Divide and distribute every object into the causal [formal] and the material.... Let the wrong which is done by a man stay there where the wrong was done.

On Ezra Pound, as quoted in The New Republic (11 November 1936)

1860s, First Inaugural Address (1861)
Context: One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This I think, can not be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other. Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them, Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you can not fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.