10 quotes
Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)
The good seed that nature plants in us is so slight and so slippery that it cannot withstand the least harm from wrong nourishment.
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)
Friendship ... receives its real sustenance from an equality that, to proceed without a limp, must have its two limbs equal.
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)
Friendship ... flourishes not so much by kindnesses as by sincerity.
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)
The mob has always behaved in this way—eagerly open to bribes that cannot be honorably accepted, and dissolutely callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honorably endured.
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)
From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free.
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)
There is in our souls some native seed of reason, which, if nourished by good counsel and training, flowers into virtue, but which, on the other hand, if unable to resist the vices surrounding it, is stifled and blighted.
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)
Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you?
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)
Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)
The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.
Disputed