Don Colacho’s Aphorisms

Neither a declaration of human rights, nor the proclamation of a constitution, nor an appeal to natural law, protects against the arbitrary ...

They started out calling liberal institutions democratic, and they ended up calling democratic despotisms liberal. Escolios a un Texto Implí...

When the tyrant is the anonymous law, modern man believes he is free. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 429

Law is the easiest method of exercising tyranny. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 423

Where we imprudently tolerate agglomerations, order and tyranny in the end unfortunately coincide. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección ...

Where everyone believes he has a right to rule, everyone eventually prefers that one man alone rule. The tyrant frees each individual from t...

Being of “divine right” limited the monarch; the “representative of the people” is the representative of absolute Absolutism. Escolios a un ...

In order to oppress the people, it is necessary to suppress in the name of the people that which stands out from the people. Escolios a un T...

To hope that the growing vulnerability of a world increasingly integrated by technology will not demand a total despotism is mere foolishnes...

Dictatorship is the technification of politics. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 322

The necessary and sufficient condition of despotism is the disappearance of every kind of social authority not conferred by the State. Escol...

Absolute monarchies disposed with less fickleness of the fortunes of one individual than popular absolutisms dispose of the destiny of entir...

The state is totalitarian by its essence. Total despotism is the form towards which it spontaneously tends. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: S...

The standard-bearers of liberty celebrated by the 19th century ended up as the vanguard of industrial despotism. Escolios a un Texto Implíci...

To be effective, the abuse of power presupposes the anonymity of the oppressor or the anonymity of the oppressed. Despotisms fail when unmi...

The old despotisms limited themselves to locking man up in his private life; those of the new stamp prefer that he have nothing but a public...

In order to distract the people while they exploit it, stupid despots choose circus fights, whereas the astute despot prefers electoral figh...

Revolutionary intellectuals have the historic mission of inventing the vocabulary and the themes for the next tyranny. Escolios a un Texto I...

To reform society by means of laws is the dream of the incautious citizen and the discrete preamble to every tyranny. Law is the juridical f...

Liberal parties never understand that the opposite of despotism is not stupidity, but authority. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , ...