Sections (TOC) :
• 1
22 Words; 110 Characters
• 2
45 Words; 259 Characters
• 3
28 Words; 167 Characters
• 4
49 Words; 266 Characters
• 5
20 Words; 129 Characters
• 6
6 Words; 45 Characters
• 7
44 Words; 300 Characters
• 8
34 Words; 227 Characters
• 9
63 Words; 356 Characters
• 10
19 Words; 111 Characters
• 11
73 Words; 450 Characters
• 12
89 Words; 490 Characters
• 13
35 Words; 235 Characters
• 14
24 Words; 132 Characters
Sections (Content) :
• 1
The state has no soul, no principles. It has but one aim -- to secure power and hold it, at any cost.
• 2
...the State is under no such restriction, since it possesses an unlimited command over the nation's credit, and therefore can use the savings of its citizens in any way that seems good to it. It can spend them on explosives or on milk for babies....
• 3
It is power that corrupts and degrades both master and slave and it makes no difference whether the power is wielded by an autocrat, by parliament or Soviets.
• 4
The depressions, the wars, and the other ills of the modern world have been possible only because there was already an unsafe concentration of power in the hands of the few. What happened was the result of the will of these few, not of the will of the many.
• 5
The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.
• 6
Power to control is always abused...
• 7
Governments oppress mankind in two ways, either directly, by brute force, that is physical violence, or indirectly, by depriving them of the means of subsistence and thus reducing them to helplessness. Political power originated in the first method; economic privilege arose from the second.
• 8
Practical and pragmatic, the bosses tolerated vise, graft, and corruption while also promoting a variety of social reforms. They had no fixed ideology, and they had few goals other than achieving and maintaining power.
• 9
Nothing can present to our judgment, or to our imagination, a figure of greater absurdity, than that of seeing the government of a nation fall, as it frequently does, into the hands of a lad necessarily destitute of experience, and often little better than a fool. It is an insult to every man of years, of character, and of talents, in a country.
• 10
...concentrated power can be always wielded in the interest of the few and at the expense of the many.
• 11
The best kings desire to be in a position to be wicked, if they please, without forfeiting their mastery: political sermonizers may tell them to their hearts' content that, the people's strength being their own, their first interest is that the people should be prosperous, numerous and formidable; they are well aware that this is untrue. Their first personal interest is that the people should be weak, wretched, and unable to resist them.
• 12
The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.
• 13
...the power against which we struggle grows ever greater, stronger, and more insolent. The last gleams of self-government -- local government, public trial, your Literature Committee, etc etc. -- are all being done away with.
• 14
It has ever been the tendency of power to add to itself, to enlarge its sphere, to encroach beyond the limits set for it...
Chronology :
April 09, 2020 : Power -- Added.
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