Coercive Power Quotes

The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.

No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is: coercive action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury-the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.

Guard with jealous attention to the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force.

Government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.

... the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards the right purpose .... Like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people.

Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state ' and nothing else

I think coercive taxation is theft, and government has a moral duty to keep it to a minimum.

Planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and the enforcement of ideals and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible.

Government is an apparatus of compulsion and coercion.

There's a very good reason that governments aren't supposed to compete with private-enterprise companies. Governments have monopolies on certain things, like eminent domain and deadly force.

The Party is not interested in the overt act. The thought is all we care about.

There never was a government without force.... A governement leaving it to a man to do his duty, or not, as he pleases, would be a new species of government, or rather no government at all.

Those who have the immense dishonesty to fight with a ballot box in one hand and a rifle in the other have no place in democratic politics.

A superpower does not have to be the bully on the block.

The course of events is so rapidly hastening forward that the emergency may soon arise when you may be called upon to decide the momentous question whether you possess the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union

Government is nothing but regulated force; force is its appropriate claim upon your attention

The word "education" has an evil sound in politics; there is a pretense of education, when the real purpose is coercion without the use of force.

Those who say that America has to dominate the world, and that you either have to control everything or go home, don't understand the way power is projected.

Every government explains its existence, and justifies its deeds of violence, by the argument that if it did not exist the condition of things would be very much worse. After assuring the people of its danger the government subordinates it to control, and when in this condition compels it to attack some other nation. And thus the assurance of the government is corroborated in the eyes of the people, as to the danger of attack from other nations.

We still give the nation state the monopoly on the legal use of violence in our own defense.

The 'private sector' of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and the 'public sector' is, in fact, the coercive sector.

In an unconstitutional partnership with the state, the church can impose the most irresistible, if covert, controls conceivable.

Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.

Certainly, imperial power is never peaceably acquired or maintained.

POLICE, n. An armed force for protection and participation.