Blaise Pascal Quotes

Reward and punishment are the twin instruments of power in the State; they must not be revealed to anyone.

Law … is but words and paper without the hands and swords of men

Governmental power is the faculty to beat into submission all those who would dare to disobey the orders issued by the authorities. … Every governmental action is backed by constables, prison guards, and executioners. However beneficial a governmental action may appear, it is ultimately made possible only by the government's power to compel its subjects to do what many of them would not do if they were not threatened by the police and the penal courts.

A law is not a law without coercion behind it.

I was the law and order.

Do not have any doubt that I will apply the law over whoever is responsible for not complying with the law.

Law has the power to compel: indeed, the ability to enforce is a condition of the ability to command.

If physical power be the fountain of law, then law and force are synonymous terms. Or, perhaps, rather, law would be the result of a combination of will and force; of will, united with a physical power sufficient to compel obedience to it, but not necessarily having any moral character whatever.

All governments, without exception, are stable only insofar as they can effectively reward and punish.

Even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

The state is force incarnate, its essence is command and compulsion.

A law has to have teeth.

Nobody is allowed to break the law.

It is one thing to persuade, another to command; one thing to press with arguments, another with penalties.

On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles.

The most powerful men were those who most effectively used the power of adult competence to enforce childish agreements.

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.

Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type.

We have disciplinary authority and will use it when appropriate.

This law will be impossible to enforce. It will produce contempt for our laws and law enforcement.

Anyone who goes against my decisions, I liquidate him

Watch out for the man who talks of putting things in order. Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe.

Covenants without the sword are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.