The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect … - Marquis de Sade

Same topic Authors

Quote of the day

I try not to plan ahead. I just kind of try to think in the moment. I always believe everything will work out the way it's supposed to.

Marquis de Sade

The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.

Crime, Government, Impossible, Mean, Vice, Vices

Same Author Quotes

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

Cradles, Despotism, Literature, Religion, Religions, Tyrants

Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplace

Simple, Imagination, Ordinary, Beauty, Commonplace

I write what I see, the endless procession to the guillotine. Were all lined up, waiting for the crunch of the blade. . . the rivers of blood are flowing beneath our feet. . . Ive been to hell, young man, youve only read about it.

Blade, Blood, Hell, Man, Men, Writing

Can we become other than what we are?

Become

Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves; all men are born free, all have equal rights: never should we lose sight of those principles; according to which never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of the sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other.

Class, Exercised, Hands, Men, Possession, Sex