QuoteProject
All governments are in equal measure good and evil. The best ideal is anarchy.
Leo Tolstoy
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Governments have both positive and negative aspects, and the ultimate ideal is to have no government at all.

In this quote, Tolstoy suggests that every government embodies both beneficial and harmful qualities, reflecting the complexities of power and authority. He posits that true freedom and the highest ideal of society might be achieved in the absence of government, which he views as a source of both good and evil in human affairs.

Themes

GovernmentAnarchyPhilosophyAuthorityFreedom

In practice

Example use cases

In a debate about political freedom, one might quote Tolstoy to emphasize the need for minimal government intervention.

More from Leo Tolstoy

Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.
Leo TolstoyRead
Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars. "And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!" thought Pierre. "And all this they've caught and put in a shed and boarded it up!
Leo TolstoyRead
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
Leo TolstoyRead
It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.
Leo TolstoyRead
Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.
Leo TolstoyRead
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor β€” such is my idea of happiness.
Leo TolstoyRead

Similar quotes

First, we must do our own personal work, then we tend the necessary work of our family, then our community, then the world.
LaoziRead
When Zionism becomes co-extensive with Jewishness, Jewishness is pitted against the diversity that defines democracy, and if I may say so, betrays one of the most important ethical dimensions of the diasporic Jewish tradition: namely, the obligation of co-habitation with those different from ourselves.
Judith ButlerRead
Fear is a relative thing; its effects are relative to power.
Sarah HallRead
Business corporations in general are not defenders of free enterprise. On the contrary, they are one of the_x000D_ chief sources of danger....Every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that's a different question. We have to have that tariff to protect us against competition from abroad. We have to have that special provision in the tax code. We have to have that subsidy.
Milton FriedmanRead
There's no way to escape the fact that we've grown up in a violent culture, we just can't get away from it, it's part of our heritage. I think part of it is that we've always felt somewhat helpless in the face of this vast continent. Helplessness is answered in many ways, but one of them is violence.
Sam ShepardRead
Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.
Annie BesantRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.