It is said with us to be unattainable. All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government. Can a democratic assembly, who annually revolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to pursue the public good?
Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention, v. 1, p. 299. (June 19, 1787)
Debates of the Federal Convention (1787)
“The British Empire was the nearest thing there has ever been to a world government. Yet its mode of operation was a triumph of minimalism.”
Source: Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)
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Niall Ferguson 24
British historian 1964Related quotes
“It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.”
Remark to Thomas Creevey (18 June 1815), using the word nice in an older sense of "uncertain, delicately balanced", about the Battle of Waterloo. Creevy, a civilian, got a public interview with Wellington at headquarters, and quoted the remark in his book Creevey Papers (1903), in Ch. X, on p. 236; the phrase "a damned nice thing" has sometimes been paraphrased as "a damn close-run thing."
Context: It has been a damned serious business... Blucher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. … By God! I don't think it would have been done if I had not been there.
Speech given to the Imperial Institute (11 November 1895), quoted in "Mr. Chamberlain On The Australian Colonies", The Times (12 November, 1895), p. 6.
1890s
Context: I venture to claim two qualifications for the great office which I hold, which to my mind, without making invidious distinctions, is one of the most important that can be held by any Englishman; and those qualifications are that in the first place I believe in the British Empire, and in the second place I believe in the British race. I believe that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen.
Speech in Edinburgh (25 September 1924), quoted in The Times (26 September 1924), p. 14
Early career years (1898–1929)
Speech given to the Imperial Institute (11 November 1895), quoted in "Mr. Chamberlain On The Australian Colonies", The Times (12 November 1895), p. 6
1890s
“No British Government ever will and ever can risk the bones of a British grenadier.”
Letter to Sir Eyre Crowe (16 February 1925) on the Polish Corridor, quoted in Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969), p. 356.
1920s
Source: The Book of Nothing (2009), chapter one "Zero—The Whole Story"
4 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)