Most of the “better sort” were not genuine Sons of Liberty at all, but timid sycophants, pliant instruments of despotism, far more intent upon the ruin of Mr Adams and America in general thsn nay Minister could be shown to be.
Sycophancy toward those who holdpower is a fact in every regime, and especially in ademocracy, where, unlike, where unliketyranny, there is an accepted principle of legitimacy that breaks the inner will to resist, and where, as I have said, there is no legitimate power other than the people to which a man can turn.
You moralistic dog—admitting a hierarchy in which you are subordinate, purely that you may have subordinates; licking the boots of a superior, that you may have yours in turn licked by an underling.
Kenneth Burke,Towards a Better Life (Berkeley: 1966), p. 9
I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant andcoward in the streets.
A poet’s prayer.Almighty Father! let thy lowly child, Strong in hislove oftruth, be wisely bold — , Apatriot bard, by sycophants reviled, Let him live usefully, and not die old I, Let poor men's children, pleased to read his lays, Love, for his sake, the scenes where he hath been.
But how can he be honoured, when he does nothonour himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public; when he must sustain with shamelessadvocacy some badgovernment,...
Anexamination of theleaders and military assistants closest toHitler – men such as Jodi andKeitel in the OKW andRibbentrop,Himmler,Goering andGoebbels - reveals that almost all were sycophants. Ribbentrop and Goering, for example, carefully saw to it that Hitler received only the reports that confirmed his ownbeliefs andimages.
A few steps brought us in full view of all the pomp, circumstance, andchivalry, bows and arrows, sycophants and rascals, with which thegovernor is usually surrounded.
Nothing is more customary in man than to recognize superior wisdom in the person of his oppressor.
Alexis de Tocqueville,Democracy in America, Volume 2, Book 1, Chapter 2, J. Spencer, trans.
The powerful, if they carry oppression beyond a certain point, necessarily end by making themselves adored by their slaves. For the thought of being under absolute compulsion, the plaything of another, is unendurable for a human being. Hence, if every way of escape from the constraint is taken from him, there is nothing left for him to do but to persuade himself that he does the things he is forced to do willingly, that is to say, to substitute devotion for obedience. ... It is by this twist that slavery debases the soul: this devotion is in fact based on a lie, since the reasons for it cannot bear investigation. ... Moreover, the master is deceived too by the fallacy of devotion.
Anorator was most in need of rhetorical means of reinscribing himself within the realm of the pitiable when faced with charges of "sycophancy," that mysterious and vilified form ofprosecution, whose name literally means "pointing out" or displaying figs. Inclassical Athens the term "sycophancy" did not refer toflattery but to some method of prosecuting that was not socially acceptable. The sychophant was somehow the opposite of the upright legitimate democratic prosecutor. Accusing one’s opponent of being a sychophant was one of the most powerful weapons in the rhetorical arsenal because the word sychophant specially directed the audience to consider the degree to which a prosecutor had veered from the city’s system of value.
The orators ... frequently take the fact that the prosecutor was not himself wronged as a sign that the prosecution is sychophantic...The sychophant characteristically acts after the event and rakes up old charges...If men do not contest charges immediately but later, they are regarded as sychophants andponeroi (vulgar people).
R. Osborne,The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens, p. 156
