Adam Smith Quotes

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

Fear is the foundation of most governments.

The government assures the people that they are in danger from the invasion of another nation, or from foes in their midst, and that the only way to escape this danger is by the slavish obedience of the people to their government. This fact is seen most prominently during revolutions and dictatorships, but it exists always and everywhere that the power of the government exists.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Rule with an iron first will inevitably come to an end.

Fear must rule in a despotism.

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Some even claim that I'm a terror, a dictator and they're right.

One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

I have built my organization upon fear.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

Remember that this White house is populated with … control freaks.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers … call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken – unspeakable fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts!

You are afraid of the one, I, of the few.... You are apprehensive of monarchy, I, of aristocracy.

Oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.

A monarch is at all times that of an enemy of the people," acting by force, fear, corruption, and delusion through his three human instruments, the soldier, the lawyer, and the priest, to produce in all times and at all places the greatest infelicity of the greatest number.

Such is the terror--the crushing fear--which is inspired by one man over that multitude, which now submits to his decrees with a zeal, apparently as ardent, as it is certainly abject and submissive. There is not a complaint heard. The calm and dark waters of despotism are never disturbed by the slightest ripple. Not a breath of free thought or manly speech passes over them, but they lie dead and deep, into which every vestige of the people's liberty and freedom has sunk and disappeared.

The people always have some champion who they set over them and nurse into greatness …. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears, he is a protector.

The people of a nation are enslaved when, together, they are helpless to institute effective change, when the people serve the government more than the government serves them.