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It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.

George MacDonald

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George MacDonald
Age: 80 †
Born: 1824
Born: December 10
Died: 1905
Died: September 18
Author
Cleric
Journalist
Minister
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Theologian
Writer
Best
Corruption
Men
Greed
Libertarianism
People
Election
Governing
Liberty
Govern
Politics
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Libertarian

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I learned that he that will be a hero will barely be a man that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work is sure of his manhood.
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I am perplexed at the stupidity of the ordinary religious being. In the most practical of all matters he will talk and speculate and try to feel, but he will not set himself to do.
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We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.' What is that, grandmother?' To understand other people.' Yes, grandmother. I must be fair - for if I'm not fair to other people, I'm not worth being understood myself. I see.
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Heaven...a place where everything that is not music is silence.
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The purposes of God point to one simple end-that we should be as he is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same blessedness.
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Suppose you didn't know him, would that make any difference?' 'No,' said Willie, after thinking a little. 'Other people would know him if I didn't.' 'Yes, and if nobody knew him, God would know him, and anybody God has thought worth making, it's an honor to do anything for.
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To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.
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Some thinkers would feel sorely hampered if at liberty to use no forms but such as existed in nature, or to invent nothing save in accordance with the laws of the world of the senses but it must not therefore be imagined that they desire escape from the region of law.
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The ideal is the only absolute real and it must become the real in the individual life as well, however impossible they may count it who never tried it.
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Diamond, however, had not been out so late before in all his life, and things looked so strange about him! - just as if he had got into Fairyland, of which he knew quite as much as anybody for his mother had no money to buy books to set him wrong on the subject.
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Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool out of you that you will know yourself for one, and begin to be wise.
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The whole trouble is that we won't let God help us.
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It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down.
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It needs brains to be a real fool.
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If God were not only to hear our prayers, as he does ever and always, but to answer them as we want them answered, he would not be God our Saviour but the ministering genius of our destruction.
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Things come to the poor that can't get in at the door of the rich. Their money somehow blocks it up. It is a great privilege to be poor--one that no man covets, and brat a very few have sought to retain, but one that yet many have learned to prize.
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Do not measure God's mind by your own.
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Those that hope little cannot grow much.
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For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.
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A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer.
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