Outre le droit des gens qui regarde toutes les sociétés, il y a un droit politique pour chacune. Une société ne saurait subsister sans un gouvernement.
MONTESQUIEU - L'Esprit des lois, i, 3 (1748).
Humaine ou animale, une société est une organisation; elle implique une coordination et généralement aussi une subordination d'éléments les uns aux autres; elle offre donc, ou simplement vécu ou, de plus, représenté, un ensemble de règles ou de lois.
HENRI BERGSON - Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion, p. 22
Il y a simultanément à l’œuvre, dans les sociétés humaines, des forces travaillant dans des directions opposées: les unes tendant au maintien et même à l’accentuation des particularismes; les autres agissant dans le sens de la convergence et de l’affinité.
CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS – Race et histoire p. 15
Inequality in the distribution of power has always existed in human communities, as far back as our knowledge extends.
BERTRAND RUSSEL – Power – p. 8
In undevelopped communities, in which a man's livelihood depends upon status rather than upon contract, he will, as a rule, consider that whatever is customary is just.
(Dans les sociétés traditionnelles non encore industrialisées, où les moyens de subsistance de chacun reposent plutôt sur le rang qu'on y occupe que sur un contrat, tout ce qui est coutumier est généralement réputé juste.)
BERTRAND RUSSEL – Power – p. 78
Although economic power, in so far as it is regulated by law, ultimately depends upon ownership of land, it is not the nominal landowners who have the greatest share of it in a modern community. In feudal times, the men who owned the land had the power; they could deal with wages by such measures as the Stature of Labourers, and with the nascent power of credit by pogroms. But where industrialism has developped, credit has become stronger than nominal ownership of land.
BERTRAND RUSSEL Power p. 101
The decay of Liberalism has many causes, both technical and psychological. They are to be found in the technique of war, in the technique of production, in the increased facilities for propaganda, and in nationalism, which is itself an outcome of Liberal doctrines. All these causes, especially where the State has economic as well as political power, have immensely increased the power of governments. The problems of our time, as regards the relation of the individual to the State, are new problems, which Locke and Montesquieu will not enable to solve. A modern community, just as much as those of the eighteenth century, requires, if it is to remain happy and prosperous, a sphere for individual initiative, but this sphere must be defined afresh, and safeguarded by new methods.
BERTRAND RUSSEL – Power –Revolutionary power – p. 93