Resolve To Serve No More

This comes from Étienne de La Boétie, boyfriend of the essayist Montaigne: You can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces. From The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, which has much to say about “leaders” and liberty. * New Escapologist Issue 19 and the anniversary edition of Escape Everything! are both available now.