Mill, Mrs. John Stuart (1851). The Enfranchisement of Women (July 1851 edición). London: Westminster & Foreign Quarterly Review. p. 27. Consultado el 4 de junio de 2014.
"To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will; it is at best an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a moral duty ... once might is made to be right, cause and effect are reversed, and every force which overcomes another force inherits the right which belonged to the vanquished. As soon as man can obey with impunity, his disobedience becomes legitimate; and the strongest is always right, the only problem is how to become the strongest. But what can be the validity of a right which perishes with the force on which it rests? If force compels obedience, there is no need to invoke duty to obey, and if force ceases to compel obedience, there is no longer any obligation. Thus the word 'right' adds nothing to what is said by 'force'; it is meaningless.
'Obey those in power.' If this means 'yield to force' the precept is sound, but superfluous; it will never, I suggest, be violated. ... If I am held up by a robber at the edge of a wood, force compels me to hand over my purse. But if I could somehow contrive to keep the purse from him, would I still be obliged in conscience to surrender it? After all, the pistol in the robber's hand is undoubtedly a power." The Social Contract, Book I, Chapter 3: The Right of the Strongest (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762).