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Self-governing   /sˈɛlfgˈəvərnɪŋ/   Listen
Self-governing

adjective
1.
(of political bodies) not controlled by outside forces.  Synonyms: autonomous, independent, sovereign.  "A sovereign state"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Self-governing" Quotes from Famous Books



... am in favour of local option. I am a thorough believer in local self-government and believe that every self-governing community which constitutes a social unit should have the right to control the matter of the regulation or the withholding ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... big-wigs rule the roost, and the rest of us are only there to delude the British people into the idea that they're a self-governing community.' ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... system of social justice under freedom, a broader, and as we fervently hope, a more enduring foundation for the welfare and progress under individual liberty of the common man, an example of federation, of peaceful adjustments by compromise and concession under a self-governing Republic, where sections replace nations over a Union as large as Europe, where party discussions take the place of warring countries, where the Pax Americana furnishes an example for a ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... Rule of St. Benedict (541) was adopted by all monks: the essential features of it were prayer, labour, silence, a common life and common property. But among the early Benedictines each monastery was independent and self-governing, though an abbey might have priories in some measure connected with it. The result was that in the course of time the discipline and life of monasteries varied infinitely; and there was no co-operation for self-defence among ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... self-government, with the control of its officials, magistrates, National Guards, and police, as well as of taxation, education, and many other spheres of activity. The more ambitious minds looked forward to a time when France would form a federation of self-governing Communes, whose delegates, deciding matters of national concern, would reduce the executive power to complete subservience. At bottom this Communal Federalism was the ideal of Rousseau and of his ideal ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... colonies governed themselves. But with regard to the executive department of the government, there were very important differences. Only two of the colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island, had governors elected by the people. These two colonies were completely self-governing. In almost everything but name they were independent of Great Britain, and this was so true that at the time of the revolutionary war they did not need to make any new constitutions for themselves, but ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske

... them managed by the State, which would distribute the products equally between the citizens. Syndicalism, on the other hand, would entirely eliminate the action of the State, and divide society into small professional groups which would be self-governing. ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... born free, and everywhere he is in chains;" yet social order, Rousseau declares, is sacred. Having resigned his individual liberty by the social pact, how may man recover that liberty? By yielding his individual rights absolutely to a self-governing community of which he forms a part. The volonte generale, expressing itself by a plurality of votes, resumes the free-will of every individual. If any person should resist the general will, he thereby sacrifices ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... fathers, however broken may be their language, however servile or noble their employments, however exalted or despised their state, all are declared to be bound together by equal political obligations.... In that self-governing country all are held to have an equal interest in the principles of its institutions and to be bound in equal duty to watch their workings." Miss Martineau was also impressed with the passion of Americans for land ownership and contrasted the United States favorably with England where the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... bay they met Lord Delaware, the new Governor, with a lot of Christmas-presents and groceries. Jamestown was once more saved, though property still continued low. The company, by the terms of its new charter, became a self-governing institution, and London was only too tickled to get out of the responsibility. It is said that the only genuine humor up to that time heard in London was spent on the jays of Jamestown ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... affair, in which Britain had no right to intermeddle, either under the Convention of 1884 or under the general right of a state to protect its subjects. Nothing is clearer than that every state may extend or limit the suffrage as it pleases. If a British self-governing colony were to restrict the suffrage to those who had lived fourteen years in the colony, or a state of the American Union were to do the like, neither the Home Government in the one case, nor the Federal Government in the other would have ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... guardian of the Irish peasantry in paying their debt to the British people—or, perhaps, even if the material condition of Ireland under Home Rule should justify that course, to take over the debt. That is the new "felt want," and the only way to supply it is to create a responsible Irish self-governing Parliament. ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender

... of the Philippines will be benefited by this Republic is my unshaken belief. That they will have a kindlier government under our guidance, and that they will be aided in every possible way to be a self-respecting and self-governing people is as true as that the American people love liberty and have an abiding faith in their own government and in their own institutions. No imperial designs lurk in the American mind. They are alien to American sentiment, thought ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... representative institutions, and did not desire them. But when Upper Canada was granted an assembly, it was impossible not to grant an assembly to Lower Canada too; and so Canada was started on that road of constitutional development which has brought her to her present position as a self-governing unit in the ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... labor unions is generally democratic. The local lodge is self-governing; it elects its delegate, who attends a council of fellow-delegates, and this council may send representatives to a still more powerful body. But however high their titles, or their salaries, these dignitaries have power only ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster

... summer of 1894 there was held in the city of Ottawa a conference of delegates from eight self-governing colonies in Australasia, South Africa, and America, who assembled for the express purpose of discussing questions which affected not merely their own peculiar interests, but touched most nearly the unity and development of the empire at large The imperial government was represented ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... smelting-ovens, when dockworkers and stevedores were thrown out of employment, then there were grumblings and there was a demand that the popular assembly be called together as in the olden days when Carthage had been a self-governing republic. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... you," said Nora. "We are to be self-governing, and every member must be a business girl. That's better than being just mill girls," Nora declared. "But it's lots nicer to have a leader who just knows all about us. It will give the girls more courage and all that! Don't ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... But the tendency was not a permanent one. The American Constitution is indeed expressly built for expansion, but only where the territory acquired can be thoroughly Americanized and ultimately divided into self-governing States on the American pattern. To hold permanently subject possessions which cannot be so treated is alien to its general spirit and intention. Cuba was soon abandoned, and though the Philippines were retained, the difficulties encountered in ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... panic. Still, in spite of this, the leaders refused to take warning, and although the political impasse was constantly discussed, the utmost concession the monarchists were willing to make was to turn China into a Federal Empire with the provinces constituted into self-governing units. The over-issue of paper currency to make good the gaps in the National Finance, now slowly destroyed the credit of the Central Government and made the suspension of specie payment a mere matter of time. By the end of February the province of Kueichow was not only officially admitted ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... Robertson as captain, and finally their devotion to the Revolutionary cause; and recited their lack of proper authority to deal promptly with felons, murderers, and the like, who came in from the neighboring States, as the reason why they wished to become a self-governing portion of North Carolina. [Footnote: The petition, drawn up in the summer of '76, was signed by 112 men. It is given in full by Ramsey, p. 138. See also Phelan, p. 40.] The legislature of the State granted ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... of a monarchy and a republic—the advantage of life on this and the other side of the line. There was nothing he liked better to expatiate upon, with that valuable proof of his own sincerity always at hand for reference and illustration. His ideal was life in a practical, go-ahead, self-governing colony, far enough from England actually to be disabused of her inherited anachronisms and make your own tariff, near enough politically to keep your securities up by virtue of her protection. He was extremely satisfied with his own country; one saw in his talk the phenomenon of patriotism ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... point of taste in personal matters,—so told that it is hard to disbelieve them, and they show that the caprices which we might have thought belonged exclusively to absolute rulers among their mistresses or their minions may be felt in the councils of a great people which calls itself self-governing. It is perfectly true that Mr. Motley did not illustrate the popular type of politician. He was too high-minded, too scholarly, too generously industrious, too polished, too much at home in the highest European circles, too much courted for his personal ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... travels in the South I did not receive a single word from the President or any member of the administration; but through the newspapers and the talk going on around me I learned that the President had taken active measures to put the "States lately in rebellion" into a self-governing condition—that is to say, he had appointed "provisional governors"; he had directed those provisional governors to call conventions, to be elected, according to the plan laid down in the North Carolina proclamation, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... hold that if there had been a proper respect for the commendable desire of the Christian peoples in European Turkey to throw off the Turkish yoke and become self-governing states, there would have been no cause for war, so far as relates to Servia and the situation which precipitated the conflict. There would have been developed a series of peaceful and progressive countries of the non-military type of ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... could to serve their country, it will receive the attention it deserves. Doubtless there may prove to be wrongs which demand righting, but the pretence of any plan for changing the essential principle of our self-governing system is a figment which its contrivers laugh over among themselves. Do the citizens of Harrisburg or of Philadelphia quarrel to-day about the strict legality of an executive act meant in good faith for their ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... is still only an imperfect means of cooperation. Our nation is far from being a complete democracy, for there are many people in it who do not have the full enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and large numbers of our "self-governing" people really have little ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... towns—Stockholm, Goeteborg, Malmoe, Norrkoeping, and Gaefle—these functions are vested in a separate municipal council. The conditions under which purely local affairs are administered are regulated by the communal laws of March 21, 1862. Each rural parish and each town comprises a self-governing commune. Each has an assembly, composed of all taxpayers, which passes ordinances, elects minor officials, and decides petty ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... them to remember that we are at the beginning of our activity as a nation, and we have yet to settle fundamentals. Races hoary with political wisdom may look with disdain on the attempts at political thinking by a new self-governing nationality, or the theories of civilization discussed about the cradle of an infant State. To childhood may be forgiven the elemental character of its thought and its idealistic imaginations. They may not persist in developed manhood; but if youth ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell

... that neither the speculative genius of a Plato nor the acute intelligence of an Aristotle could rise to the conception of an organized, self-governing community on a great scale. To each it seemed evident that the group proper must remain a comparatively small one. Plato finds it necessary to provide in his "Laws" that the number of households in the State shall be limited to five thousand and forty. Aristotle, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... they influenced the terms of settlement. An expedition under Colonel Wolseley marched through the wilderness north of Lake Superior only to find that Riel and his lieutenants had fled. By the Manitoba Act the Red River country was admitted to Confederation as a self-governing province, under the name of Manitoba, while the country west to the Rockies was given territorial status. The Indian tribes were handled with tact and justice, but though for the time the danger of armed resistance had passed, the ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... every workman and for every working woman wages enough to support a life of comfort and an old age of leisure and quiet, as befits those who have an equal share in a self-governing State. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... and savagery. Thoroughly to comprehend the immensity of such a task, we must also reflect that the men to whom that task is intrusted are anything rather than intellectual giants. Yet the true solution of the problem will be given by the principle of self-government and by the self-governing People. And it is therein that consists the genuine American originality which Europe finds it so impossible to understand. And it is just as little understood by most of the diplomatists here, and what is still ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... American colonies were self-governing in the extremest sense, that is, they were accustomed to very little government interference of any sort. They were also poor and entirely unused to war. Suddenly they found themselves plunged into a bitter and protracted conflict with the most powerful of civilized nations. ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... against foreign attack, while agreeing that a self-governing colony should be self-dependent, Lord Elgin felt that the peculiar position of Canada, having no foreign attack to apprehend except hi quarrels of England's making, made her case somewhat exceptional. And any wholesale withdrawal of British ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people; are, and of right ought to be a sovereign, and self-governing association, under the control of no power, other than that of our God, and the general government of the congress; to the maintenance of which independence, we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual co-operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... the signs of its growing power are daily more and more manifest. That it should be deeply interested in the perpetuity of American institutions, as affecting its own position, is natural. In the failure of man's self-governing capacity here, where every circumstance has been favorable to its exercise, the rising spirit of a broader liberty in England must foresee the death-blow to its own hopes. Our failure will not be fatal to ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... have differed more profoundly from this system than the methods which the English were contemporaneously applying, without plan or clearly defined aim, and guided only by immediate practical needs, and by the rooted traditions of a self-governing people. Their enterprises received from the home government little direct assistance, but they throve better without it; and if there was little assistance, there was also little interference. In the East the English East India ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... continental, while those of Serbia were never maritime. The semi-independent Slavonic city-republic of Ragusa (called Dubrovnik in Serbian) played a very important part throughout this period. It was under Venetian supremacy, but was self-governing and had a large fleet of its own. It was the great place of exchange between Serbia and western Europe, and was really the meeting-place of East and West. Its relations with Serbia were by no means always peaceful; it was a Naboth's vineyard ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... all little self-governing communities," supplied Win. "It's a privilege they have always had, and even England wouldn't dare take it from them now. Jersey is desperately jealous of Guernsey. They say that even a Jersey toad will die if ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... had strength to take care of themselves. She studied their characters, and gave much thought to the way to correct their faults. Sometimes a single word of reproof or command was the result of hours of thought, but they could not know that. At last they seemed to be thoroughly self-governing. They did the right thing instinctively, whether she was there to see them or not. If they were in doubt they came of their own accord to ask her advice, not ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... Empire is divided from the military point of view into two divisions: into the United Kingdom itself with the Colonies governed by the English Cabinet, and the self-governing Colonies. These latter have at their disposal a militia, which is sometimes only in process of formation. They can be completely ignored so far as concerns any ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... a treaty of faith and the pledged word of rulers and peoples is the common heritage of Great Britain and of the empire. My peoples in the self-governing dominions have shown beyond all doubt that they whole-heartedly indorse the grave decision it was necessary to take, and I am proud to be able to show to the world that my peoples oversea are as determined as the people ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... relation of the churches among themselves, Browne and Barrowe each insisted upon the integral independence and self-governing powers of the local units. Both approved of the "sisterly advice" of neighboring churches in matters of mutual interest. Both held that in matters of great weight, synods, or councils of all the churches should be summoned; that the delegates to such ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... ruled long enough. Even a popular war president at the pinnacle of his power found the American people resenting, so it has been positively affirmed, his plea for the return of his party to continued control in 1918. Can we as a self-governing people look with anything but wonder at the occasional American who fails to see that the perpetual rule of one party year after year which we as Americans have always doubted the wisdom of, is the very thing that Lenin and Trotsky have fastened upon Russia. Russia, that wanted to be freed ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... life;" but conduct has its source in character. Right conduct in life is to be secured by the formation of right character in youth. The prime element in character, as related to conduct, is the power of self-directions and hence the supreme aim of school discipline is to prepare the young to be self-governing men ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... society. In the hands of the Angles and Saxons, particularly, but also among the Celts, Franks, Helvetii, and Belgae, this idea of individual freedom and of the subordination of the State to the individual has borne large fruit in modern times in the self-governing States of France, Switzerland, Belgium, England and the English self-governing dominions, and in the United States of America. After much experimenting it now seems certain that the Anglo- Saxon type ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... hope that you will see, though I may not, the day when what we call London, but which is really, nine-tenths of it, only a great nest of separate villages huddled together, will be divided into three great self-governing cities, London, Westminster, and Southwark; each with its own corporation, like that of the venerable and well-governed City of London; each managing its own water-supply, gas-supply, and sewage, and other matters besides; and ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... formation of character. Without it, there will be no proper system and order in the regulation of the life. Upon it depends the cultivation of the sense of self-respect, the education of the habit of obedience, the development of the idea of duty. The most self-reliant, self-governing man is always under discipline: and the more perfect the discipline, the higher will be his moral condition. He has to drill his desires, and keep them in subjection to the higher powers of his nature. They must obey the word of command of the internal monitor, the conscience—otherwise ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... spoken of Britain and America as the two countries upon whose choice this supreme issue hangs. But the act of choice is not the same for the two. The British imperial policy (apart from that of the self-governing dominions) has been conducted on a basis of free trade or economic internationalism. A reversion to close imperialism would be for her a retrogression. The United States, on the other hand, has practised a distinctively national economy, and the adoption ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson

... outbreak of disorder that we have had to do our best to put down; who does not agree that disorder, whatever your ultimate policy may be—must be with a firm hand put down. If India to-morrow became a self-governing Colony—disorder would still have to be put down with an iron hand; I do not know and I do not care, to whom these gentlemen propose to hand over the charge of governing India. Whoever they might be, depend upon it that the maintenance of order is the foundation of anything ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... Free Towns: By 1216 the most advanced of the English towns had become to a very considerable extent self-governing. See W. Stubbs's ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... the greatest teachers the world has had, and this is the sum of all their great teachings: The universe is self-existing, self-sustaining and self-governing, having all the potentialities of its own life within itself, and what is true of it in general is equally so of all the phenomena which enter into its constitution, including man; who, though he is the highest among them, is only a phenomenon, on a level with all the rest, not excepting ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... on 5 May 1996, but have not resumed since the initial meeting. Under the DOP, Israel agreed to transfer certain powers and responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority, which includes a Palestinian Legislative Council elected in January 1996, as part of interim self-governing arrangements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A transfer of powers and responsibilities for the Gaza Strip and Jericho took place pursuant to the Israel-PLO 4 May 1994 Cairo Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area and in additional areas of the West Bank pursuant to ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... have spoken is inseparable from an inquiring, self-governing community, but stimulated, doubtless, at the present time by the unsettled condition of our relations with several foreign powers, by the new obligations resulting from a sudden extension of the field ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson

... intellectual magnetism of convictions permeating the million is by far stronger than the commonly called governmental action from above, and it is at the same time elastic and expansive, even if the official leaders may turn out to be altogether mediocrities. The self-governing free North will show more vitality and activity than any among the governed European countries would be able to show in similar emergencies. This is my creed, and I have faith in ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... self-governing and warlike Norsemen could not bring themselves tamely to submit to the tyranny of Harald Haarfager, or Fairhair, King of Norway by hereditary right, when he cast aside all the restraints of ancient custom, and, in his ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... call London; and ere you are an old man there may be between four and five millions. Now to supply all these people with water is a duty which we must not leave to any private companies. It must be done by a public authority, as is fit and proper in a free self-governing country. In this matter, as in all others, we will try to do what the Royal Commission told us four years ago we ought to do. I hope that you will see, though I may not, the day when what we call London, but which is really nine-tenths ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... of help, both of men and provisions, which the self-governing Dominions and the Indian Empire made to the Mother Country almost immediately after the outbreak of the war, the knowledge that these great daughter-nations were morally convinced of the justice of the British cause, was a factor of even more far-reaching importance. Great as was the necessity ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne



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