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Sections (Content) :
• 1
The masses, as yet all too docile, are innocent of all the brutality committed in their name and to their detriment. They are innocents, but not ignorant; I believe that, like myself, they are sensible of it and outraged; I believe that, like me, they would make haste to halt it; except that, unable to distinguish the cause properly, they do not know how to act.
• 2
The State being a parasite, it cannot live after it has killed the body on which it feeds.
• 3
Yet how long would authority and private property exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen. The Socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the myth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme of life means the perpetuation of power. And how could the latter be acquired without numbers? Yes, authority, coercion, and dependence rest on the mass, but never freedom or the free unfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free society.
• 4
...all extensive governments, especially absolute monarchies, are pernicious to population, and contain a secret vise and poison, which destroy the effect of all these promising appearances.
• 5
Can it be that you have never seen a louse in a pair of drawers? When he runs away into a deep seam or hides in some broken wadding, he thinks he has found a 'propitious residence.' In his movements he dares not leave the seam's edge nor part from the crotch of the drawers, and thinks he is 'toeing the orthodox line' that way. When he is hungry he bites his man and thinks he can eat forever. But when, [in the event of a great fire] there are hills of flame and streams of fire, when towns are charred and cities destroyed, then the lice, trapped where they are, die in their pair of drawers. What difference is there in your gentleman's living in his small area and a louse in a pair of drawers? How sad it is that he thinks he can 'keep catastrophes far away and good fortune near' and '[his family and descendants] eternally secure'!
• 6
...the State only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two walls.
• 7
The masses are much more advanced than we imagine. They don't worry over complicated doctrinal considerations, but with a sure instinct they call for the most substantive solutions: they expect much.
• 8
There may come a time when the citizens, no longer looking upon themselves as interested in the common cause, will cease to be the defenders of their country, and the Magistrates will prefer the command of mercenaries to that of free-men; if for no other reason than that, when the time comes, they may use them to reduce free-men to submission.
• 9
A king is so far from furnishing his subjects with their subsistence that he gets his own only from them; and, according to Rabelais, kings do not live on nothing. Do subjects then give their persons on condition that the king takes their goods also? I fail to see what they have left to preserve.
• 10
...the public force, which is destined to the preservation of the State; and, in a word, is always ready to sacrifice the government to the people, and never to sacrifice the people to the government.
• 11
It takes a long time for feeling so to change that men can make up their minds to take their equals as masters, in the hope that they will profit by doing so.
• 12
The day-laborer would really have more enjoyment if the receiver with his laws, his institutions, etc., all of which the day-laborer has to pay for though, did not exist at all. And yet, with it all, the poor right loves his master.
• 13
...this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient, by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it.
• 14
It may be very desirable and useful to get an eight-hours' day legalized by Parliament, or to get a Liberal program for school libraries sanctioned through your Committee ; but if as a means to this end a Member of Parliament must publicly lift up his hand and lie, like when taking an oath, by expressing in words respect for what he does not respect; or (in our own case) if, in order to pass programs however Liberal, it is necessary to take part in public worship, to be sworn, to wear a uniform, to write mendacious and flattering petitions, and to make speeches of a similar character, etc., etc. -then, by doing these things and foregoing our dignity as men, we lose much more than we gain, and by trying to reach one definite aim, (which very often is not reached) we deprive ourselves of the possibility of reaching other aims which are of supreme importance. Only people who have something which they will on no account and under no circumstances yield can resist a Government and curb it. To have power to resist, you must stand on firm ground.
Chronology :
April 09, 2020 : The Masses -- Added.
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