I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, c…

This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only t…

The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externall…

The rational elites, obsessed by structure, have become increasingly authoritarian in a modern, administrative way. The citizens feel insulted and isolated. Th…

When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from…

Wherever the sentiment of the majority is still genuine and intense, it is found to have abated little of its claim to be obeyed. (p. 13)