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Happiness Quote by Evita Peron

"If I have to apply five turns to the screw each day for the happiness of Argentina, I will do it"

About this Quote

There is a velvet-glove menace hiding in Evita Peron`s promise. The line takes a domestic object - a screw - and turns it into a daily ritual of pressure, discipline, and control. Five turns: not a flourish, a quota. It frames coercion as routine governance, even as care. Happiness becomes something the state can manufacture, provided it is willing to tighten, incrementally, on whoever resists.

The intent is twofold. On the surface, it is devotional: I will do the hard, unpleasant work for the people. Beneath that, it is a warning wrapped as service. Evita isn`t just pledging effort; she is claiming the moral authority to apply force, repeatedly, because she alone knows what Argentina needs. That is classic populist logic: the leader and "the people" are fused, so opposition stops being disagreement and starts looking like sabotage of collective well-being.

Context matters. Peronism sold itself as social justice delivered at scale - unions empowered, wages raised, the descamisados elevated - while concentrating power and narrowing the space for dissent. Evita, as the movement`s emotional engine, spoke in the language of sacrifice and loyalty, casting politics as a love story with a villain: the oligarchy, the foreign interest, the ungrateful critic. The screw-turn metaphor flatters her base by suggesting their happiness is measurable and attainable, and it licenses harshness by making it sound like caretaking. It works because it converts control into compassion and turns accountability into sentiment.

Quote Details

TopicServant Leadership
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Evita Peron quote on tightening the screw
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About the Author

Evita Peron

Evita Peron (May 7, 1919 - July 26, 1952) was a Statesman from Argentina.

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