The police can use violence to say, expel citizens from a public park because they are enforcing duly constituted laws. Laws gain their legitimacy from the Constitution. The Constitution gains its legitimacy from something called 'the people.' But how did 'the people' actually grant legitimacy to the Constitution? As the American and French revolutions make clear: basically, through acts of illegal violence. So what gives the police the right to use force to suppress the very thing—a popular uprising—that granted them their right to use force to begin with?.David Graeber
About This Quote
The quote above is one of the more famous ones. It is taken from an essay by Henry David Thoreau, titled "Civil Disobedience." It deals with the topic of the relationship between violence and law. At first, this essay seems to be on totally different topic than it actually is. The essay discusses the concept of civil disobedience, which is pretty self-explanatory.
Thoreau focuses on the relationship between violence and law. He argues that since governments are granted their power through violence, they have no right to use violence against their own people.
Source: The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement
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