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About this quote

What does it mean?
Authority may demand total compliance under threat of expulsion or harsher consequences.
In plain terms
Conform or face expulsion or worse.
What can you take from it?
Expect strict demands for loyalty from power.

Where it applies

  • government
  • corporate
  • authoritarian regimes

Putting it to work

  • assess power dynamics
  • plan exit strategies

Questions to consider

  • Who demands your conformity?
  • What are the costs of dissent?

Another view

This ignores the possibility of resistance or negotiation.

More from James I of England

  1. If you aim at a Scottish presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy, as God and the devil. ... No bishop, no King!

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  3. Herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's gifts, that the sweetness of man's breath, being a good gift of God, should be willfully corru…

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