Octave Mirbeau

“ They'll tell you, as connoisseurs of humanity, that politics is an abominable lie, that everything there is the opposite of good sense, justice and right and you have nothing to hope for from it, you whose accounts are settled in the great book of human destinies. ”

“ How is it possible that there can anywhere be met, even in the furthest corners of Brittany, a man stupid enough, so lacking in reason, so blind to what can be seen, so deaf to what can be heard as to vote white, blue, or red without there being anything that forces him to, without his being paid or made drunk? ”

“ But never mix man in with your dreams, for wherever man is there is pain, hatred, and murder. Above all, remember that the man who solicits your suffrage is, by this very fact, a dishonest man, for in exchange for the situation and the fortune you propel him towards he promises you a bunch of marvelous things that he won’t give you and that aren’t not in his power to give you, anyway. ”

“ O good voter, unspeakable imbecile, poor slave: if instead of allowing yourself to be taken in by absurd stories issued every morning by the penny newspapers big and small, blue and black, white and red and that are paid to have your skin ”

“ Sheep go to the slaughter; they say nothing and they hope for nothing. But at least they don’t vote for the butcher who will kill them and the bourgeois who will eat them. More beastly than the beasts, more sheepish than the sheep, the voter names his butcher and chooses his bourgeois. ”

“ But that a deputy or a senator or a president of the republic or no matter which of the strange comedians who seek elective office of whatever kind finds voters, that is to say the undreamed of being, the improbable martyr who feeds you on his bread, clothes you in his wool, fattens you on his flesh, and enriches you with his money with the sole aim of receiving in exchange for his prodigality truncheon blows on the neck, kicks in the behind, and shots in the chest. ”

“ What baroque sentiment, what mysterious suggestion does this thinking biped – gifted, it is claimed, with a will – obey, who goes along proud of his right, certain that he is fulfilling an obligation in depositing some ballot in some voting box, it mattering little what name is written on it. ”

“ And yet the world has gone on for centuries, societies have developed and succeeded one another, each like the one preceding it, and one fact dominates all of history: the protection of the mighty and the crushing of the weak. ”

“ The weak don’t understand that they have only one historical raison d'être, and that’s to pay for a bunch of things they'll never get to use and to die for political schemes that have nothing to do with them. ”

“ By my will Floquet makes laws which bind 36,000,000 men, and Baudry d'Ausson as well, and Pierre Alype too.” How can it be that there are still people like these? How is it that however stubborn, proud, and paradoxical they might be they are not yet discouraged and ashamed of their labors? ”

“ But they have preferences among those who rob from them and those who execute them and they vote for the most rapacious and the most ferocious. They voted yesterday, they'll vote tomorrow, and they will always vote. ”