Top 5 Quotes & Sayings by Etienne de La Boetie

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French writer Etienne de La Boetie.

Last updated on November 21, 2024.

Étienne or Estienne de La Boétie was a French magistrate, classicist, writer, poet, and political theorist, best remembered for his intense and intimate friendship with essayist Michel de Montaigne. His early political treatise Discourse on Voluntary Servitude was posthumously adopted by the Huguenot movement and is sometimes seen as an early influence on modern anti-statist, utopian, and civil disobedience thought.

French - Writer | November 1, 1530 - August 18, 1563

Source: Wikipedia

It has always happened that tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration.

Etienne de La Boetie

It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and willingly that one is led to say that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.

Etienne de La Boetie

Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed.

Etienne de La Boetie

Liberty is the natural condition of the people. Servitude, however, is fostered when people are raised in subjection. People are trained to adore rulers. While freedom is forgotten by many there are always some who will never submit.

Etienne de La Boetie

Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.

Etienne de La Boetie

Top 5 Quotes & Sayings by Etienne de La Boetie

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