Title page from The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude

The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude

Boetie asks one of the most basic questions of political theory: why is it that a minority of rulers can remain in power over a majority of subjects who pay all the taxes. His answer is that most of the subjects willingly submit to rule by a minority.

Key Quotes

Origin of Government

For the present I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the…