“In order to convince the world to worship government, those within its presumably divine channels of rule had to create an image of superiority. Early governments did so by invoking fear and terror. This is not surprising. Early deities were ruthless, vindictive, and cruel.”
Source: A Way to Be Free: The Autobiography of Robert LeFevre, Volume I, (1999), p. 137
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Robert LeFevre 47
American libertarian businessman 1911–1986Related quotes

“Can it be fancied that Deity ever vindictively
Made in his image a mannikin merely to madden it?”
"The Rationale of Verse", III (1848); this is comparable to: ""What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke / A conscious Something to resent the yoke", FitzGerald, Omar Khayyám.

“The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human.”
Source: The Elementary Particles
Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XIII: The Beginning and the End; 3. The Supreme Moment and After (p. 161)

Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 1, The Corporation's Rise To Dominance, p. 17

Source: "Правила жизни Мустафы Джемилева" https://esquire.ru/rules/5160-mustafa-dzhemilev/

“All government is cruel; for nothing is so cruel as impunity.”
Pilate, as portrayed in Preface, Difference Between Reader And Spectator
1930s, On the Rocks (1933)

“The federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.”
Max Fisher, "Why Do Japanese Prime Ministers Keep Resigning" http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/why-do-japanese-prime-ministers-keep-resigning/239850/ (3 June 2011), The Atlantic.