Might Makes Right/Quotes

"The pope disapproves? How many divisions does he have?"

—Josef Stalin

Well, Vita says she's 16 and she could rip your soul out of you so who are we to question that.

—Anon in Vigor Mortis chat

Bullying the weak is justice in war. Hail Justice!!!

—Saga of Tanya the Evil

If there are gods, they do not help, and justice belongs to the strong; but know that all things done before the naked stars are remembered.

—Klingon proverb

Enough might makes what is right irrelevant.

—Many

Listen, then, he said; I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.

—Thrasymachus, Plato's Republic

Political power flows out from the barrel of a gun.

—Chairman Mao - "The Little Red Book"

Justice will prevail, you say!? Damn right it will! And that's because whoever wins this war becomes justice!

—Donquixote Doflamingo - One Piece

Mace Windu: The Yinchorri believe that if they're strong enough to take something and hold on to it, it is, by rights, theirs.

Oppo Rancisis: "Might makes right". A short-sighted philosophy, and one that is often recanted upon meeting a more powerful adversary.

—Star Wars: Jedi Council: Acts of War

If you steal from another Telvanni, but still live, then clearly you deserve whatever you stole. Murdering your opponents by magic or treachery is the traditional way of settling disputes. If you win, then clearly your argument has more merit.

—Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind introducing you to House Telvanni

Fuck your parliament and your constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked good.

—President Lyndon B. Johnson to the Greek ambassador

You know as well as we that right, as this world goes, is only in question between equals in power; for the strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must.

—The Melian Dialogue, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War

Pothinus: I stand upon my right here. Where is your right?

Gaius Julius Caesar: It is in Rufio's scabbard, Pothinus. I may not be able to keep it there if you wait much longer.

—Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw

Even a cozy revolution is a revolution — not a tea party. The revolution must smash the old regime. The old regime has made no law under which it may be smashed. The new regime is not a regime, and thus can make no law, until it has smashed the old regime.
This implies that regime change inherently must pass through a legal singularity, under which there is no law but power — because the singularity is not a state of law, but a state of war.
While we have long forgotten the difference, the Romans knew that inter arma silent leges: in time of war, the law is silent. And any time when sovereignty is not clear and stable is a time of war.
So a regime in a legal singularity is above written law. It is not above the law of war. The law of war is natural, not written.

—"Persuasion and the Mensheviks", from Gray Mirror Of The Nihilist Prince by Curtis Yarvin