Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.
Interpretation
Violent power is illegitimate and unstable, reliant on force rather than true authority.
Denis Diderot's quote emphasizes that power gained through violence is not legitimate; it is merely a seizure of control that can easily crumble when the coercive force is diminished. True authority is built on consent and the willingness of others to follow rather than through intimidation or fear.
In practice
In a speech on leadership, you might quote Diderot to emphasize the importance of ethical governance.
The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
This root [the potato], no matter how much you prepare it, is tasteless and floury. It cannot pass for an agreeable food, but it supplies a food sufficiently abundant and sufficiently healthy for men who ask only to sustain themselves. The potato is criticized with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisms of peasants and laborers?
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
Do you suppose you will look the same when you are an old woman as you do now? Most folk have three faces—the face they get when they’re children, the face they own when they’re grown, and the face they’ve earned when they’re old. But when you live as long as I have, you get many more. I look nothing like I did when I was a wee thing of thirteen. You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.
Grace finds us beggars but leaves us debtors.
There's such divinity doth hedge a king _x000D_ That treason can but peep to what it would.
There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment.
We are not just bundles of atoms being pushed around. But, there's something spiritual about us whether we give that a religious interpretation or not. And so, it's that sense of there being dignity to life that I associate with the word God. I mean, that's probably a pretty radical and agnostic way of interpreting it. But, that's what I think.
It's undeniable that what we are taught as a culture to believe about disability is at odds with traditional notions of masculinity.
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