My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.
Marquis De SadeRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that government systems cannot be purely virtuous as they must apply some level of control over inherent corruption in humanity.
Marquis De Sade's quote examines the intrinsic nature of governance and its relationship with human morality. It argues that since society harbors criminals and vices, any governing body must also possess some degree of corruption to effectively manage those elements. To maintain control and order, leaders must be more proactive and forceful than the people they govern, reflecting a disillusionment with the notion that virtue alone can govern a flawed society.
Themes
GovernmentCorruptionVirtuePowerControl
In practice
Example use cases
During a political discussion about the nature of power and governance.
More from Marquis De Sade
All quotes →So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
Marquis De SadeRead
Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling.
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Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?
Marquis De SadeRead
Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!
Marquis De SadeRead
Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.
Marquis De SadeRead
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