Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom there will be no state.

Collectivism can be imposed only upon slaves—and then collectivism becomes the negation of humanity.

Liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.

With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor ... Each of the things is, by the respective party, called by two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.

Wherever there is repression of the individual, wherever there are acts contrary to the nature of the individual, there can be no greater crime.

In an over-organized society, the individual is altogether crushed out of existence. He gains the whole wealth of social thought around him and loses his own soul.

I'm a slave to this leaf in a diary that lists what I must do, what I must say, every half hour.

Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.

Where is the man, who, if asked to become a slave, would not hurl back the offer indignantly in the teeth of the oppressor?

I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

The colonists are by the law of nature free-born, as indeed all man are, white or black...It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.

The slaves of socialism are slaves, but they are no one's property and therefore no one's loss.

Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.

One doesn't want one's identity coerced.

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

I don't want to live in a nanny state where people are telling me where I can go and what I can do.

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.

Free men have arms; slaves do not.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.

Whether the institution to be defended is slavery, political absolutism, or the absolutism of the head of a family, we are always expected to judge of it from its best instances; and we are presented with pictures of loving exercise of authority on one side, loving submission to it on the other

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, bur incomparable things, called by the called by two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.