Does it seem to you impossible to imagine anything more inextricable than the social contract, when you think of the frightful number of relations that it must regulate -- something like squaring the circle, or finding perpetual motion? That is the reason why, wearied of the struggle, you fall back on absolutism and force.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (2007). “General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century”, p.131, Cosimo, Inc.
