Susan Sontag Quotes

Government is a necessary evil

Whoever says State necessarily says domination, and, consequently, slavery; a State without slavery, open or concealed, is inconceivable: that is why we are enemies of the State.

Real power does not consist in the ability to inflict capital punishment upon the subjects, but in the will and the ability to protect the subjects against the world.

One must obey the man whom the city sets up in power in small things and in justice and in its opposite.

the fateful equating of power with violence, of the political with government, and of government with a necessary evil has begun.

When the tempers of men are softened as well as their knowledge improved, this humanity appears still more conspicuous, and is the chief characteristic which distinguishes a civilized age from times of barbarity and ignorance. Factions are then less inveterate, revolutions less tragical, authority less severe, and seditions less frequent.

Law … is but words and paper without the hands and swords of men

To be a political philosopher is more a vocation than a career …. it is a vocation for thinking about the political. Not just day-to-day politics, but about the phenomenon of the political, that all communities of any degree of complexity organize themselves according to certain principles of justice, equality, reciprocity, and authority.

The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible…. The Lord…did justice – through His minister, the state.

Liberalism is the answer for which modernity is the question

I established law and justice in the land.

It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition that he may abuse it.

There is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive.

How can one govern without taxes, without strength, without authority?

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

Tell me if ever in history there was a government which was based exclusively upon the consent of the people, and which was ready to dispense altogether with the use of force. There has never been and never will be such a government.

Liberalism has never been about establishing a universal standard. Liberalism is simply intellectual cover for those wanting to gain political power and increase the size of the state.

Pluralism has been the driving fact behind political theory now since the Copernican revolution and the wars of religion that were spawned from it.

The art of revolutionizing and overturning states is to undermine established customs, by going back to their origin, in order to mark their want of justice.

To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.

From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation.

What evidence do we have that states are incapable of further exercising an authority they have exercised successfully for over 200 years?

Government is the assumption of authority over a given area and all within it, exercised generally for the double purpose of more complete oppression of its subjects and extension of its boundaries.

Progressivism, liberalism, or whatever you want to call it has become an ideology of power. So long as liberals hold it, principles don't matter.

The state is the executive committee of the ruling class.