Quotes About Power

La Boétie, Anti-Dictator, pp. 43–44. Whenever a ruler makes himself dictator . . . all those who are corrupted by burning ambition or extraordinary avarice, these gather around him and support him in order to have a share in the booty and to constitute themselves petty chiefs under the big tyrant. 11

If "we are the government," then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also "voluntary" on the part of the individual concerned.

It is an ironic footnote on Peter Stuyvesant's frenzy at the idea of surrender that he passed his last days, in the late 1660s and early 1670s, in peaceful contentment on his farm in Manhattan, not only unmolested but in friendship with Governor Nicolls. Shorn of power, Peter Stuyvesant was a happier and perhaps a wiser man.

For all governments—but especially democratic governments—must work hard at persuading their subjects that all of their deeds of oppression are really in their subjects' best interests

we are the government," then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also "voluntary" on the part of the individual concerned.

Yet, after all, we are not wedded to a "royal prerogative," and it is the American concept that sovereignty rests, not in government, but in the people.

In the field of justice, man's will is all; men can move mountains, if only men so decide.

If the state is able to gain unquestioned control over the unit of all accounts, the state will then be in a position to dominate the entire economic system, and the whole society. It will also be able to add quietly and effectively to its own wealth and to the wealth of its favorite groups, and without incurring the wrath that taxes often invoke. The state has understood this lesson since the kings of old began repeatedly to debase the coinage.

He seeks to show that the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to accept State rule, and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded subjects.

A government that has a permanent standing army at its disposal will always be tempted to use it, and to use it in an aggressive, interventionist, and warlike manner.

individuals. Social power is the power over nature, the living standards achieved by men in mutual exchange. State power, as we have seen, is the coercive and parasitic seizure of this production—a draining of the fruits of society for the benefit of nonproductive (actually antiproductive) rulers.

Si los humanos son tan malos, ¿cómo podemos esperar que un gobierno coercitivo, compuesto por humanos, mejore la situación?46 Rothbard responde a estos argumentos y a muchos más.47

si realmente queremos mejorar el mundo, debemos mirar más allá del gobierno. Las soluciones reales no están en el poder, sino en el mercado.

For States have always needed opinion-moulding intellectuals to con the public into believing that its rule is wise, good, and inevitable; into believing that the "emperor has clothes.

Furthermore, those seeking government privileges, or lucrative posts in the bureaucracy, perform an economic role entirely different from that of people genuinely engaged in trade; those so engaged oppose interference with their trade. It is highly misleading to lump the two together into the term "merchants.

The State, in the words of Oppenheimer, is the "organization of the political means"; it is the systematization of the predatory process over a given territory.

Thus, America, above all countries, was born in an explicitly libertarian revolution, a revolution against empire; against taxation, trade monopoly, and regulation; and against militarism and executive power.

if a judicial decree of "unconstitutional" is a mighty check to government power, an implicit or explicit verdict of "constitutional" is a mighty weapon for fostering public acceptance of ever-greater government power

It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes. If individuals do not know their own interests in many cases, they are free to turn to private experts for guidance. It is absurd to say that they will be served better by a coercive, demagogic apparatus.

It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.

Scratch an egalitarian, and you will inevitably find a statist.

just because one suffers from depression, from childhood memories, or from whatever does not necessarily mean that one is not in the grip of a power complex!

Hardcore of black humor Rap beat: Tam House, Tam House Tu Tutuk Ta Tam House, Tam House The hardcore black humor of reality is tearing the psyche of crazy laughter, billions of ridiculous laughter everywhere, overlooking everywhere. The power of awareness increases with laughter. Reason bursts at the seams with laughter, a new person is born. Evolution through the laughter of awareness.

Money sharpens predatory reflexes like a blade.