Blaise Pascal Quotes

You can't build politics on love. People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos.

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

Everyone sees they cannot well live asunder, nor many together, without some rule to which all must submit.

As a teenager I was more of an anarchist, but now I want people to thrive and be harmonious.

As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.

Better a hundred years of tyranny than one day of anarchy.

Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain little respect.

Nothing appears more surprising ... than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

Better 100 years of tyranny than one day of anarchy.

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar.

No moderate man views it in any other light than as an axiom, or self-evident truth, namely, that if any excuse for disobedience were once admitted, or any indulgence granted to these tender-conscienced inferiors there would be an end of all government in an instant; neither commands nor obedience could proceed one step further, but every individual instrument of power in that fatal society, astonished at the monstrous phenomenon, would stare at one another; all the wheels of the political machine would stop at once. nay would split into ten thou-sand pieces; every relation and connection of their parts would be instantly dissolved, and the beautiful whole would rush into a wild chaos of anarchy and confusion.

[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

Civilization is always in danger when those who have never learned to obey are given the right to command.

How foolish it would be if women did not obey men. The world would be all confusion!

All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.

Does it seem to you impossible to imagine anything more inextricable than the social contract, when you think of the frightful number of relations that it must regulate -- something like squaring the circle, or finding perpetual motion? That is the reason why, wearied of the struggle, you fall back on absolutism and force.

Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.

Freedom is not possible without authority - otherwise it would turn into chaos and authority is not possible without freedom - otherwise it would turn into tyranny.

No one can act alone in the name of all and no one can accept the anarchy of a society without rules.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness.

Team Work is the essence of good governance. It is necessary to form a team within the party and also within the administrative system.

Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, the laws of death.

A portion of the multitude must ever be coerced.

As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.

Men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others.