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Quotes About Coercion

government to force people to act against their own immediate interests in order to promote a supposedly general interest.
~ Milton Friedman
The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority.
~ Milton Friedman
The view that government's role is to serve as an umpire to prevent individuals from coercing one another was replaced by the view that government's role is to serve as a parent charged with the duty of coercing
~ Milton Friedman
Because there is one God, all people are related to that one God on equal terms. The central command of that one God is to love neighbors—to treat others as we would like them to treat us, as expressed in the Golden Rule. We cannot claim any rights for ourselves and our group that we are not willing to give to others. Whether as a stance of the heart or as outward practice, religion cannot be coerced.[217]
~ Miroslav Volf
For no matter how stern or cruel a regime, in the laboratory of history only rarely can state coercion be so powerful as to control fully the course of events. The depth and scope of spontaneous events that counter the wishes and expectations of a dictatorial government are not a lesser part of history than the deeds and misdeeds of the government and state.
~ Moshe Lewin
All labor systems that depend on coercing a work force into accepting bad conditions and unfair compensation have recognized the effectiveness of keeping that work force exhausted to keep it from making trouble.
~ Naomi Wolf
The ideology of beauty] has grown strong to take over the work of social coercion that myths about motherhood, domesticity, chastity, and passivity, no longer can manage. It is seeking right now to undo psychologically and covertly all the good things that feminism did for women materially and overtly.
~ Naomi Wolf
Todos os sistemas de trabalho que dependem da coação de uma mão de obra, forçando-a a aceitar condições más e remuneração injusta, reconheceram a eficácia de manter essa mão de obra exausta para impedir que ela se rebele.
~ Naomi Wolf
It was the first responders who put their bodies in harm's way for the safety of my colleagues and acquaintances. But when it came to it, when it came to protecting the bodies of first responders from coercion and harm, the "Zoom class" failed utterly to reciprocate with courage of their own. To say the least, in this time of testing, we have not all been equally brave.
~ Naomi Wolf
You can't try to keep someone against their will, or it's difficult to get them to listen or have the right mentality.
~ Gennaro Gattuso
The majority is not society, is not everyone. Majority coercion over the minority is still coercion.
~ Murray Rothbard
Compelled belief is no belief at all.
~ Thomas C. Foster
Coercion depends more on the threat of what is yet to come than on damage already done. The pace of diplomacy, not the pace of battle, would govern the action; and while diplomacy may not require that it go slowly, it does require that an impressive unspent capacity for damage be kept in reserve.
~ Thomas C. Schelling
state says it is. It will provide services you do not want, will never use, and may even find morally repugnant, and then tell you what you must pay for them.
~ Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word Jesus Christ, so that it should read a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion. The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.
~ Thomas Jefferson
I have examined all the known superstitions of the world,and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men women and children since the introduction of Christianity,have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Coercion from outside, strong temperamental inclinations and passions within ourselves, do nothing to effect the essence of our freedom. They simply define its action by imposing certain limits on it.
~ Thomas Merton
Electric cars may be fun at amusement parks, where they don't have to go very far or very fast. But if the consuming public wanted electric cars for regular use, Detroit would be manufacturing them by the millions. Only people infatuated with their own wonderful specialness would think that their job is to coerce both the manufacturers and the consuming public into something that neither of them wants.
~ Thomas Sowell
Emotional relationships are relationships of desire, tainted by coercion and constraint; something is expected from the other person, and that makes him and ourselves unfree. Objective cognition lies hidden behind the attraction of the emotional relationship; it seems to be the central secret.
~ C.G. Jung
novelist Jonathan Franzen wrote a piece for the Guardian calling Twitter a "coercive development" in the literary world,
~ Cal newport
La cultura è un sistema di limitazioni imposte al comportamento naturale dell'uomo: i non-acculturati, coloro che non sono in grado o rifiutano di interiorizzare i principi morali limitatori, e dunque di autoregolarsi, vengono governati con lo strumento della coercizione.
~ Calderón de la Barca
Pickup line... pickup line... she racked her brain until she found an explanation and brightened. "Mine would be—roses are red, violets are blue, if you don't do what I say I will kill you.
~ Gena Showalter
Instruments of coercion, once created, have a tendency to find their own natural masters.
~ George F. Kennan