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Epictetus

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Kings and tyrants have armed guards wherewith to chastise certain persons, though they be themselves evil. But to the Cynic conscience gives this power—not arms and guards. (119)

 
Epictetus

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The original context is that a husband might lock his wife in the house to prevent her adulteries, but she is cunning and will start with the guards; hence, who guards the guards? The phrase has come to be applied broadly to people or organisations acting against dishonesty or corruption, esp. in public life. See Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? at Wikipedia.

 
Juvenal
 

There I also met the Spanish priest Antonio Llidó. He was accused of having hidden and protected people of the MIR who were persecuted. Antonio Llidó never denied this, saying that he could not lie to them. The guards would laugh at him, and commented that when Antonio Llidó was being tortured he was asked to name people, and he would say that he could not give them the names. 'And why not?' the guards asked. 'Because of my principles,' Antonio replied in his Spanish accent, which the guards mockingly imitated.

 
Antonio Llido
 

It has been said a thousand times and in a thousand books that ancestor-worship is for the most part the source of primitive religions, and it may be strictly said that what most distinguishes man from the other animals is that, in one form or another, he guards his dead and does not give them over to the neglect of teeming mother earth; he is an animal that guards its dead.

 
Miguel de Unamuno
 

The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards - and even then I have my doubts.

 
Gene Spafford
 

Others may fence themselves with walls and houses, when they do such deeds as these, and wrap themselves in darkness—aye, they have many a device to hide themselves. Another may shut his door and station one before his chamber to say, if any comes, He has gone forth! he is not at leisure! But the true Cynic will have none of these things; instead of them, he must wrap himself in Modesty: else he will but bring himself to shame, naked and under the open sky. That is his house; that is his door; that is the slave that guards his chamber; that is his darkness! (111)

 
Epictetus
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