“A lesson which history should have taught us thousands of years ago was finally driven home. No man can wield absolute power over other men and still retain his own mind.”
Source: The Jewels of Aptor (1962), Chapter X (p. 133)
Context: A lesson which history should have taught us thousands of years ago was finally driven home. No man can wield absolute power over other men and still retain his own mind. For no matter how good his intentions are when he takes up the power, his alternate reason is that freedom, the freedom of other people and ultimately his own, terrifies him. Only a man afraid of freedom would want this power, who could conceive of wielding it. And that fear of freedom will turn him into a slave of this power.
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Samuel R. Delany 131
American author, professor and literary critic 1942Related quotes
“The worst lesson that can be taught a man is to rely upon others and to whine over his sufferings.”
"How Not To Better Social Conditions" in Review of Reviews (January 1897), p. 39 https://books.google.com/books?id=J2FAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA39 · Full text online (with at least two typos — in the last sentence of the article) as "How Not To Help Our Poor Brother" http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/speeches/trhnthopb.pdf
1890s
Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)
Letter from Abigail to John Adams, Braintree, May, 7, 1776.
Context: I can not say that I think you very generous to the Ladies, for Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken — and notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet.
Gott ist tot! aber so wie die Art der Menschen ist, wird es vielleicht noch Jahrtausende lang Höhlen geben, in denen man seinen Schatten zeigt.
Und wir — Wir müssen auch noch seinen Schatten besiegen.
Sec. 108
Quotes about quotes: see also God is dead.
The Gay Science (1882)
Source: The Portable Nietzsche
Introduction
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Context: The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through government" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.
Source: A History of Mathematics (1893), p. 30 Reported in Memorabilia mathematica or, The philomath's quotation-book by Robert Edouard Moritz. Published 1914.