Obligation Quotes – Insightful Sayings and Reflections

"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."

Étienne de La Boétie

"A businessman cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. If bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he passes the loss on to you."

Ayn Rand

"This concern with the basic condition of freedom -- the absence of physical constraint -- is unquestionably necessary, but is not all that is necessary. It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free -- to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act."

Aldous Huxley

"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."

Robert A. Heinlein

"The price of maintaining membership in the establishment is unquestioning acceptance of authority."

Neil Postman

"The fear of freedom is the fear of assuming responsibility."

Joost A.M. Meerloo

"And I command you to kneel, Before the God of thunder and rock and roll, the spell you're under will slowly rob you of your virgin soul"

Kiss

"We can’t wait for mandatory vaccination to become unnecessary just because infection levels in the population are very high. Omicron as a kind of ‘dirty vaccination’ is not an alternative to a vaccination mandate."

Karl Lauterbach

"With the introduction of compulsory vaccination, it is actually illegal to live in Austria and not be vaccinated. And this can also have other consequences."

Karoline Edtstadler

"There is something totalitarian about requiring a person, under threat of punishment, to have a liquid injected into their body. This would only be justified in exceptional cases."

Kai Möller

"Although people initially submit under coercion and force, those who come after them obey without regret and willingly do what their predecessors did because they had to. That is why men who are born under the yoke and then raised and brought up in slavery are content to live in their original circumstances without further effort, unaware of any other state or right, and considering the state into which they were born to be entirely natural. ... the powerful influence of custom is in no way more compelling than in this, namely, the habituation to submission."

Étienne de La Boétie

"Your obedience is boundless, and, let me tell you, it is becoming more and more unforgivable with each passing day."

Thomas Mann

"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him."

Ezra Pound

"If you have to be persuaded, reminded, pressured, lied to, incentivized, coerced, bullied, socially shamed, guilt-tripped, threatened, punished and criminalized… If all of this is considered necessary to gain your compliance – you can be absolutely certain that what is being promoted is not in your best interest."

Ian Watson

"The German is like a slave who obeys his master without chains, without a whip, by the mere word, even by a glance. Servitude is within him, in his soul; spiritual slavery is worse than material slavery. The Germans must be liberated from within; nothing from without will help."

Heinrich Heine

"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter’s definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority."

Stanley Milgram

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."

Henry David Thoreau

"No duty, however, binds us to these so-called laws, whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in our being."

Benjamin Constant