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The rationality of the ruled is always the weapon of the rulers.
Zygmunt Bauman
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The governed often provide rationale for the authority of those in power.

This quote by Zygmunt Bauman suggests that the logic and reasoning of the general populace can serve to bolster and justify the control exercised by those in power. It implies that the justifications people make can be co-opted by rulers to maintain authority, highlighting the complex relationship between authority and the governed, and raises questions about the nature of consent and compliance in society.

Themes

RationalityPowerAuthoritySocietyGovernance

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a political science lecture discussing the dynamics of power and governance.

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As far as love is concerned, possession, power, fusion and disenchantment are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
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