21 Quotes by Bertrand De Jouvenel

The law of all modern states takes account of associations, whose members, in theory, pursue the common end with equal zeal. The experience of all associations proves, however, that this is not the case, and that a lively, constant and vigorous awareness of the end is found only in a minority of the associates; an association is really rather like a comet—a large tail of docile followers dragged along by a small dynamic head.

Of all the simplifications to which the human spirit naturally inclines, unable to reconcile itself to the complexity of the real, there is none more dangerous than the attempt to integrate the whole of society in one vast, permanent action group.

There is a tyranny in the womb of every Utopia.

As every advance of Power is useful for war, so war is useful for the advance of power; war is like a sheep-dog harrying the laggard Powers to catch up their smarter fellows in the totalitarian race.

Sooner or later, a society of sheep must create a government of wolves.

Democracy, then, in the centralizing, pattern-making, absolutist shape which we have given to it is, it is clear, the time of tyranny’s incubation.

The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State.

Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: We are our own Huns.

The intellectual’s hostility to the businessman presents no mystery, as the two have, by function, wholly different standards. While the businessman’s motto is the customer is always right, the intellectual’s task is to preserve his perceived standards against the weight of popular opinion.