#2,759

Neither a declaration of human rights, nor the proclamation of a constitution, nor an appeal to natural law, protects against the arbitrary power of the state.
The only barrier to despotism is customary law.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 443

#2,681

They started out calling liberal institutions democratic, and they ended up calling democratic despotisms liberal.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 432

#2,660

When the tyrant is the anonymous law, modern man believes he is free.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 429

#2,616

Law is the easiest method of exercising tyranny.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 423

#2,371

Where we imprudently tolerate agglomerations, order and tyranny in the end unfortunately coincide.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 383

#2,183

Where everyone believes he has a right to rule, everyone eventually prefers that one man alone rule.
The tyrant frees each individual from the tyranny of his neighbor.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 355

#2,141

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

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 349

#2,031

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 Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 330

#1,982

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

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 322

#1,979

Dictatorship is the technification of politics.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 322

#1,945

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

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 317

#1,501

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

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 252

#1,424

The state is totalitarian by its essence.
Total despotism is the form towards which it spontaneously tends.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 241

#1,319

The standard-bearers of liberty celebrated by the 19th century ended up as the vanguard of industrial despotism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 227

#1,221

To be effective, the abuse of power presupposes the anonymity of the oppressor or the anonymity of the oppressed.
Despotisms fail when unmistakable faces confront each other.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 213

#912

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 life.
To domesticate man all one has to do is politicize all his gestures.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 166

#756

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

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 136

#443

Revolutionary intellectuals have the historic mission of inventing the vocabulary and the themes for the next tyranny.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 88

#383

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 form of custom or the trampling of liberty.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 79

#329

Liberal parties never understand that the opposite of despotism is not stupidity, but authority.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 71