In this system the government plays a preeminent role, because it is upon it, the custodian of the principle of authority, that the daily task of modifying and remaking society devolves.<p>According to others, on the contrary, society is a purely natural fact. Like the earth on which it stands, society moves in accordance with general, preexisting laws. In this system, there is no such thing, strictly speaking, as social science; there is only economic science, which studies the natural organism of society and shows how this organism functions.
Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 15-16
Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 15-16
Source: Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship, (1979), p. 263
Part I, Essay 16: The Stoic
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)
"The Legislator," lecture delivered at the University of Chicago (1946), edited for the Committee on Social Thought by Robert B. Heywood, p. 119 (1947)
Political Disquisitions (1774)
Context: All lawful authority, legislative, and executive, originates from the people. Power in the people is like light in the sun: native, original, inherent, and unlimited by anything human. In governors it may be compared to the reflected light of the moon, for it is only borrowed, delegated, and limited by the intention of the people; whose it is, and to whom governors are to consider themselves aa responsible, while the people are answerable only to God; — themselves being the losers, if they pursue a false scheme of politics.
“For my own part I am persuaded that everything advances by an unchangeable law through the eternal constitution and association of latent causes, which have been long before predestinated.”
Equidem æterna constitutione crediderim nexuque causarum latentium et multo ante destinatarum suum quemque ordinem immutabili lege percurrere.
V, 11, 10.
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book V
Ashby (1962), quoted in: V. Lawrence Parsegian (1972) This cybernetic world of men, machines, and earth systems'. p. 178: About the principle of self-organization
Sex Slavery (1890)
Context: O height and depth of purity, which fears so much that the children will not know who their fathers are, because, forsooth, they must rely upon their mother's word instead of the hired certification of some priest of the Church, or the Law! I wonder if the children would be improved to know what their fathers have done. I would rather, much rather, not know who my father was than know he had been a tyrant to my mother. I would rather, much rather, be illegitimate according to the statutes of men, than illegitimate according to the unchanging law of Nature.
Toute loi trop souvent transgressée est mauvaise: c'est au législateur à l'abroger ou à la changer.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 113
