Denis Diderot Quotes

Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.

The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason is terror and force.

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

The power that is supported by force alone will have cause often to tremble.

Fear is the foundation of most governments.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

Anyone who goes against my decisions, I liquidate him

… the tools of despotism and corruption

Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.

Those who fear men like laws.

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

See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.

The more power there is, the more bondage, the more fear.

It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

Back in those days intimidation was the greatest tool the drill instructor had. Without that tool, he would not have had control.

The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.

No tyrant, however evil, has yet lacked ready hands to execute his most abominable will. To read how eagerly men have rushed to serve the despot is the bitterest, the saddest matter of history; it is the saddest sight in our own day.

When it comes to tyrants, dictators and terrorists, strength and the threat of force is the only language they understand.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

Sometimes fear is used as a way to control.

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.

The thing about Republicans is that they don't care so much about respect, but they love fear, at least in others.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

The ruling idea of the politician - stated rather bluntly - is that those who are opposed to him exist for the purpose of being made to serve his ends, if he can get power enough in his hands to force these ends upon them.