“There can be no freedom if one man or one group of men... is assumed... inherently perfect or perfectible. Its claim to perfection or perfectibility is a claim to absolute rule.”

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 122

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

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There can be no freedom if one man or one group of men... is assumed... inherently perfect or perfectible. Its claim to…" by Peter F. Drucker?
Peter F. Drucker photo
Peter F. Drucker 180
American business consultant 1909–2005

Related quotes

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Jocelyn Bell Burnell photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“The perfect man of pagans was the perfection of the man there is; the perfect man of christians, the perfection of the man there isn't; the buddhists' perfect man, the perfection of not existing a man.”

Ibid., p. 150
The Book of Disquiet
Original: O homem perfeito do pagão era a perfeição do homem que há; o homem perfeito do cristão a perfeição do homem que não há; o homem perfeito do budista a perfeição de não haver homem.

Giordano Bruno photo
Prem Rawat photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo

“I claim no perfection for my self. But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth, which is but another name for God.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

1940s, To Every Briton (1940)
Context: This is no appeal made by a man who does not know his business. I have been practising with scientific precision non-violence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. I have applied it in every walk of life, domestic, institutional, economic and political. I know of no single case in which it has failed. Where it has seemed sometimes to have failed, I have ascribed it to my imperfections. I claim no perfection for my self. But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth, which is but another name for God. In the course of the search the discovery of non-violence came to me. Its spread is my life-mission. I have no interest in living except for the prosecution of that mission.

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker photo

“The Anarchists never have claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow authority.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

Voluntary Cooperation a Remedy http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tucker/tucker15.html
Individual Liberty (1926)

T. E. Hulme photo
Sri Chinmoy photo

“No religion is absolutely perfect.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

Mother India's Lighthouse: India's Spiritual Leaders (1971)
Context: No religion is absolutely perfect. Yet not only do we fight for religion, but also are we often willing to sacrifice our lives for it. And what we hopelessly fail to do is to live it. A true religion is that which has no caste, no creed, no colour. It is but an all-uniting and all-pervading embrace.

Related topics