A Quote by Anton Chekhov

To advise is not to compel. — © Anton Chekhov
To advise is not to compel.
I have always employed humor, and I think it’s absolutely crucial that we do because, among other things, humor is the only free emotion. I mean, you can compel fear, as we know. You can compel love, actually, if somebody is isolated and dependent — it’s like the Stockholm syndrome. But you can’t compel laughter. It happens when two things come together and make a third unexpectedly. It happens when you learn something, too.
It is time to move away from advise and obstruct and get back to advise and consent.
[Tyranny is] to compel men not to think as they do, to compel men to express thoughts that are not their own.
Dear rulers ... I maintain that the civil authorities are under obligation to compel the people to send their children to school. ... If the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service to bear spear and rifle, to mount ramparts, and perform other martial duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil, whose object it is secretly to exhaust our cities and principalities of their strong men.
But I can tell you what your folly and injustice will compel us to do. It will compel us to be free from your domination, and more self-reliant than we have been.
What I would advise, what I advised before the election, and what I will continue to advise after the election, is that elections matter; voting matters; organizing matters; being informed on the issues matter.
Everyone may have some advise for the RBI. Some may advise, 'Cut your lending rates and raise the deposit rate.' How will a bank function? We take a medium term view. The bank has an 80-year-old history. I don't want to destroy it for a few decisions.
I wouldn't even consider it if I were you. But then if I were you, I would not be me, and if I were not me, I would not be able to advise you, and if I were unable to advise you, you'd do as you like, so you might as well do as you like and have done with it.
Is it just or reasonable, that most voices against the main end of government should enslave the less number that would be free? more just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves. They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always right to win it and to keep it, whenever they have power, be the voices never so numerous that oppose it.
A ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel.
While the discreet advise, the foole doth his busines. [While the discreet advise, the fool doth his busines.]
I don't even compel my wife to wear a mangalsutra or a bindi.
No issue can be negotiated unless you first have the clout to compel negotiation.
The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.
I never did, nor do I believe I ever shall, give advice to a woman who is setting out on a matrimonial voyage; first, because I never could advise one to marry without her own consent; and, secondly, I know it is to no purpose to advise her to refrain when she has obtained it. A woman very rarely asks an opinion or requires advice on such an occasion, till her resolution is formed; and then it is with the hope and expectation of obtaining a sanction, not that she means to be governed by your disapprobation, that she applies.
O accursed hunger of gold, to what dost thou not compel human hearts!
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