ר Publilius Syrus on Carrot Incentives. A quotation website tells us that Publilius Syrus says in his Maxims,
Beneficium accipere, libertatem est vendere.
or, in English,
To accept a favor is to sell one's freedom.
I am particularly interested in this because it is the theme of my 2003 book with Mark
Ramseyer on the Japanese judiciary. Even if judge are never demoted because of
the way they decide cases, if they are denied promotion because of it they are not
independent.
I'll have to find out more about Syrus, who seems to have other good maxims too, though I'd never heard of him before. Also, I will repeat a plea I often make to quotation listers such as Bartlett's: please give us specific citations. I'd really like to know where to check that you've got the quotation right. It isn't quite that "If you don't have a citation, he didn't say it", but for scholarly work it's nice to have some evidence that the supposed quotation really is a quotation.
[permalink, http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/03.12.07b.htm ]
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