“Freedom is completely without meaning unless it is related to necessity, unless it represents victory over necessity.”
Source: The Technological Society (1954), p. xxxii
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Jacques Ellul 125
French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarch… 1912–1994Related quotes

“Good officers never engage in general actions unless induced by opportunity or obliged by necessity.”
Boni duces publico certamine numquam nisi ex occasione aut nimia necessitate confligunt.
De Re Militari (also Epitoma Rei Militaris), Book III, "Dispositions for Action"
Context: Punishment, and fear thereof, are necessary to keep soldiers in order in quarters; but in the field they are more influenced by hope and rewards. Good officers never engage in general actions unless induced by opportunity or obliged by necessity. (General Maxims)

Speech in the Commons during the debate which preceded the "Vote of No Addresses" (January 1648) as recorded in the diary of John Boys of Kent
Context: We declared our intentions to preserve monarchy, and they still are so, unless necessity enforce an alteration. It’s granted the king has broken his trust, yet you are fearful to declare you will make no further addresses... look on the people you represent, and break not your trust, and expose not the honest party of your kingdom, who have bled for you, and suffer not misery to fall upon them for want of courage and resolution in you, else the honest people may take such courses as nature dictates to them.

1970s, Second Inaugural Address (1973)

“To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.”

“One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government”
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests. I believe that every national officer, elected or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the States.

“Freedom is only necessity understood.”
The Dilemma of Determinism (1884)
1880s

“History is at once freedom and necessity.”
Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971).