Leadership Quote by Robert Dale Owen

Power respects power, even when it comes wrapped in vice. Owen’s line isn’t praising evil; it’s diagnosing a human reflex that keeps politics dangerously efficient. “Boldness and decision” are the traits that cut through uncertainty, and uncertainty is what most people can’t stand for long. When someone acts with force and clarity, the crowd often reads it as competence or destiny, even if the goal is rotten. Owen is naming the uncomfortable truth that moral judgment is frequently downstream of emotional relief: we prefer a wrong answer delivered confidently to a difficult question left open.

The phrasing matters. “Command” is bluntly political, evoking hierarchy and obedience rather than persuasion. “Concurrence” is the sharper word: it’s not just that people tolerate the bold actor; they join them. Owen implies complicity isn’t always coerced. It’s volunteered, because decisiveness offers a shortcut through fear, complexity, and personal responsibility.

Context sharpens the warning. As a 19th-century politician and reform-minded public figure, Owen lived in an era of mass movements, charismatic leaders, and fierce moral debates (slavery, labor, women’s rights). In that climate, the ability to act decisively could look like leadership - and could also steamroll deliberation and conscience. The quote reads like an early field note on what we’d now call authoritarian allure: not ideology first, but tempo and posture. Evil doesn’t always win by hiding; it often wins by moving faster than doubt.