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In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.

— Thích Nhất Hạnh Engaged Buddhist Reader: Ten Years of Engaged Buddhist Publishing (1996)

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Government

More quotes by Thích Nhất Hạnh

Your true home is in the here and the now. It is not limited by time, space, nationality, or race.

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it.

You are a miracle, and everything you touch could be a miracle.

Children understand very well that in each woman, in each man, in each child, there is capacity of waking up, of understanding, and of loving.

Being Peace (2005)

It's wonderful to be alive and to walk on earth.

Talk at Stonehill College (2002)

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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: Thích Nhất Hạnh (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.