Can't find a quote...

October 26, 2007 10:15 AM

Help me find the source of a quote!

I remember reading a quote a while back that was saying that (potentially) a government can create such fear in people that it won't need to take away their freedoms because people will give them away voluntarily. Anyone know who said this?

posted by triggerfinger to education (10 comments total)

Sounds like Hobbes' Leviathan to me, it's certainly the sentiment.
posted by mrmcsurly at 10:19 AM on October 26, 2007

It sounds vaguely Foucauldian to me, although maybe more in sentiment than in word.
posted by streetdreams at 10:34 AM on October 26, 2007

Terrified people do not want to be free, they want to be protected. If you can keep the people in a state of terror, you won't have to take away their freedom--they'll give it to you willingly.

-Alden Loveshade
posted by OpinioNate at 10:59 AM on October 26, 2007 [2 favorites]

For some reason I'm thinking it might be someone like George Orwell, but I couldn't find anything when I looked through his quotes.
posted by triggerfinger at 10:59 AM on October 26, 2007

OpinioNate, that seems to be the one. Though I've not heard of Alden Loveshade and I could have sworn that the quote was attributed to someone I was familiar with! Thank you!
posted by triggerfinger at 11:03 AM on October 26, 2007

It seems a pretty self-evident sentiment once you hear it, so perhaps it has been said many times in different ways. Glad I could help.

Unfortunately now I can't seem to leave that site for all its awesome quotes.
posted by OpinioNate at 11:08 AM on October 26, 2007

I had in mind Foucault from Discipline and Punish: "A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a
true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas; it is at the stable point of reason that he secures the end of the chain; this link is all the stronger in that we do not know of what it is made and believe it to be our own work . . . ."
posted by wheat at 11:15 AM on October 26, 2007

I could have sworn that the quote was attributed to someone I was familiar with!

Quotes are almost always attributed (usually wrongly) to someone you're familiar with—people seem to need familiar sources. The fact that you've never heard of a suggested source is a powerful argument for its plausibility. If it's attributed to Mark Twain or Winston Churchill, odds aren't so good.
posted by languagehat at 11:56 AM on October 26, 2007

A confirmation of sorts of languagehat's remarks about needing familiar sources: the Foucault quote that wheat cites is itself a quotation from someone else: Foucault is citing J.M Servan's "Discourse on the Administration of Criminal Justice" (1767).
posted by azure_swing at 1:34 PM on October 26, 2007

Similar and oft-cited:

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_G%C3%B6ring#Quotations
posted by lullabyofbirdland at 2:12 PM on October 26, 2007