Blaise Pascal Quotes

Might was the measure of right.

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Would you rather lead an army of slaves?

Between the people and their enemies there can be nothing in common but the sword; we must govern by iron those who cannot be governed by justice; we must oppress the tyrant...

It is right that what is just should be obeyed; it is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed. Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical.

Oppression is the essence of power.

A man with a club is a law-maker.

Oppression is but another name for irresponsible power, if history is to be trusted.

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.

Power is what men seek and any group that gets it will abuse it.

Power intoxicates men. It is never voluntarily surrendered. It must be taken from them.

All political questions, all matters of right, are at bottom only questions of might.

Don't be deceived. There is no justice but strength.

The natural course of power is to make the many slaves to the few.

Those who exercise power always arrange matters so as to give their tyranny the appearance of justice.

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws

No man ever ruled other men for their own good.

The silence of peoples is something kings should study.

Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject, not the citizen; for kings And subjects, mutual foes, forever play A losing game into each other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

The art of power often involves brutality — and other offenses too.

Instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. "Might makes right," and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.

The establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain it's control, kill us