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The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.

— Robert Frost

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Source: in Bent Flyvbjerg, et al., Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis, Cambridge University Press, 19 April 2012, p. 72
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by Robert Frost

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

a review of A Swinger of Birches (1957)

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

A Boy's Will (1913)

It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Say something to us that we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

A Witness Tree (1942)

We love the things we love for what they are.

Mountain Interval (1916)

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)

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Topics

Power

More quotes by Robert Frost

Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form, but it is drama or nothing.

Preface to A Way Out: A One-act Play (1929)

The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

It is the future that creates his present.
All is an interminable chain of longing.

In the Clearing (1962)

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.

North of Boston (1914)

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.

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The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.

Martin Buber What is Man? (1938)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Frost (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.