“The man who gives his own decisions priority over society is a criminal.”

Source: The Stars My Destination (1956), Chapter 14 (p. 221).

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The man who gives his own decisions priority over society is a criminal." by Alfred Bester?
Alfred Bester photo
Alfred Bester 18
American science fiction author 1913–1987

Related quotes

Milan Kundera photo
Albert Schweitzer photo

“The man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life in his own.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics

Peter F. Drucker photo
James Russell Lowell photo
Simone Weil photo

“If a man has willfully refused to consent, then it is in itself a criminal activity for him to exercise any function, major or minor, public or private, which gives him control over people's lives.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)
Context: The proportions of good and evil in any society depend partly upon the proportion of consent to that of refusal and partly upon the distribution of power between those who consent and those who refuse.
If any power of any kind is in the hands of a man who has not given total, sincere, and enlightened consent to this obligation such power is misplaced.
If a man has willfully refused to consent, then it is in itself a criminal activity for him to exercise any function, major or minor, public or private, which gives him control over people's lives. All those who, with knowledge of his mind, have acquiesced in his exercise of the function are accessories to the crime.
Any State whose whole official doctrine constitutes an incitement to this crime is itself wholly criminal. It can retain no trace of legitimacy.
Any State whose official doctrine is not primarily directed against this crime in all its forms is lacking in full legitimacy.
Any legal system which contains no provisions against this crime is without the essence of legality. Any legal system which provides against some forms of this crime but not others is without the full character of legality.
Any government whose members commit this crime, or authorize it in their subordinates, has betrayed its function.

Peter F. Drucker photo

“No society can function as a society, unless it gives the individual member social status and function, and unless the decisive social power is legitimate.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 28

David Graeber photo

“The criminalization of debt was the criminalization of the very basis of human society.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Eleven, "Age of the Great Capitalist Empires", p. 334

David D. Friedman photo
Muqtada Sadr photo

“Saddam is a war criminal and there are no two people who can argue over this.”

Muqtada Sadr (1973) Iraqi politician

Source: Asia Times http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FC18Ak01.html

“By punishing the criminal the moral man hopes to dissuade the evil imprisoned in his own breast from escaping. Fear of self is projected in hatred of the immoral other.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 35

Related topics