The Devil's Dictionary: Republic

Updated May 14, 2020 | Infoplease Staff
by Ambrose Bierce
REPROBATION
REQUIEM

REPUBLIC

-n.

A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience. In a republic, the foundation of public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to. There are as many kinds of republics as there are graduations between the despotism whence they came and the anarchy whither they lead.

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