lock Tyranny
Oppressive and unjust rule
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"Tyrants have never ceased to display great mutual friendship, because they know very well that they themselves spread the seeds of discord, and that the people who bear the burden of their yoke are in a state of mind to be easily stirred up. Good men love each other, and tyrants can only fear one another."
menu_book Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
View Full Quote"The first reason why men serve willingly is that they are born serfs and are reared as such. From this there follows another result, namely that people easily become cowardly and submissive under tyrants. For the people, being numbed and having been made sleepy, are little by little lulled into insensibility, and accustomed to the idea of serving."
menu_book Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
View Full Quote"For the present I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him."
menu_book Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
View Full Quote"Be resolved to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces."
menu_book Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
View Full Quote"This single tyrant need not be combated, need not be defeated; he is automatically defeated if the country refuses to consent to its own enslavement. It is not necessary to deprive him of anything; simply give him nothing. There is no need for the country to do anything for itself, provided it does nothing against itself."
menu_book Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
View Full Quote"He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. From where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves?"
menu_book Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
View Full Quote"What difference does it make whether a man is despoiled of his fortune openly and by force, or secretly, by stealth — whether through a bandit on the road or through a prince who debases the currency by which all things are measured?"
menu_book De Rege et Regis Institutione (On the King and the Royal Institution)
View Full Quote"When a prince seizes sovereign power by force and arms without any legal title, without popular consent, and without the approval of the better part of the commonwealth, he may be killed by any man whatsoever — for he is a public enemy who has broken the bond that holds human society together."
menu_book De Rege et Regis Institutione (On the King and the Royal Institution)
View Full Quote"Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
menu_book Democracy in America
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De Rege et Regis Institutione (On the King and the Royal Institution)
Juan de Mariana's major work of political theory, published in 1599. Mariana argues that political power originates in the community and is held in...
Read MoreDiscourse on Voluntary Servitude
Written around 1549 by the young French magistrate Étienne de La Boétie and first published posthumously in 1576, this founding text of libertarian...
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