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This site contains presentations, publications, lessons and training materials developed over many years. The site is continually updated so I hope you'll come back often. All content is freely shareable and linkable, but I'd love to hear your comments about any of it. You can always find me at sine@udel.edu.

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September 11, 2006

"That government is best ..."

I started off on this tangent as I was listening to a podcast about biking. They were covering a news story in which a town council in Texas was trying to pass an ordinance to require all cyclists, of any age, to wear helmets. This led to a very loud protest and the ordinance was at least tabled.

So that roused my usual knee-jerk reaction that "That government is best that governs least." I knew if I wanted to include a quote like that in a blog entry I’d have to attribute it. I had always remembered this as Thoreau, but I wanted to be sure so off to trusty Google. By putting in just the first phrase, "That government is best," I got an interesting return.

Now, of course, I know better than to take the first entry so I scanned through a few. The collective wisdom of the Internet is that this was probably from Thomas Paine with a few attributions to Thomas Jefferson. I was suspicious, though, that none of them could give any exact citation.

I ended up at the source, On Civil Disobedience by Thoreau, which is freely available on Project Gutenberg. He opens with "I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically." And doesn't attribute anyone!

Posted by Pat on September 11, 2006 8:30 AM