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Better were the prospects of a people under the influence of the worst government who should hold the power of changing it, than those of a people under the best who should hold no such power.

— Frances Wright Independence Day speech (1828)

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More quotes by Frances Wright

I have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on it my fortune, my reputation and my life.

From the era which dates the national existence of the American people, dates also a mighty step in the march of human knowledge.

Independence Day speech (1828)

We detect … throughout the whole of things — in the operations of nature, of human society, and in those of our own internal percipient and sentient soul — two master energies.

An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.

A Few Days in Athens (1822)

The Virginians are said to pride themselves upon the peculiar tenderness with which they visit the sceptre of authority on their African vassals.

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Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Frances Wright (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.