Opinions

As Napoleon Hill pointed out in his great book, Think and Grow Rich -

"Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth."

...too implicit a confidence in their public servants

"I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. -- From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy."
--U.S. Senator Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves."