Politics
~3 mins read
The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. Because the weak don’t come together and resist. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” James Baldwin
“People whose power is real fulfill their obligations; people whose power is hollow insist on their claims.”
“Insight sees the insignificant. Strength knows how to yield.”
“Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter”
“Despise The Free Lunch”
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
“My course is set for an uncharted sea.” ― Dante Alighieri
If they can make you ask the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte
Soft power: Shaping the preferences through appeal and attraction
The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude
“It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it
promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom
that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it,
obeying so easily and willingly that one is led to say that this
people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.”
“It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born.”
“Resolve 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.”
― Étienne de La Boétie,
Also see
Sub-pages
- Asimov
- Brave New World
- Look Down And Around
- Orwell
- Prince
- Questioning People Seen As A Threat To Status Quo
- The Triumph of Stupidity, Bertrand Russell
- Warfare Is Deception
- Who Goes Nazi