Tyranny Quotes

A city which belongs to just one man is no true city

~ Sophocles

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

~ Thomas Jefferson

He said to people: you’re free. And they said hooray, and then he showed them what freedom costs and they called him a tyrant and, as soon as he’d been betrayed, they milled around a bit like barn-bred chickens who’ve seen the big world outside for the first time, and then they went back into the warm and shut the door...

~ Terry Pratchett

Tyranny anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere.

~ Alex Storozynski

I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.

~ Samuel Johnson

What are the present governments of Europe, but a scene of iniquity and oppression? What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say, It is a market where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic, at the expense of a deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French Revolution is traduced.

~ Thomas Paine

Public awareness is the equinox of tyranny’s rise; once one man learns of another’s captivity, he will act to free him. It is the best and most certain part of man’s nature.

~ John Kramer

The social contract known as 'The Constitution' has been null and void since the last person who signed it, died. Even then, it was only ever applicable to the men who signed it. That's how contracts work.

~ Dane Whalen

Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs. Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the grace of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have gained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past examples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unless renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic key to my life.

~ Frank Herbert

Freedom is an idea that no tyrant will ever crush.

~ Laurence Overmire

He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

It's all very well to put the government in the hands of the perfect man, but what do you do when the perfect man gets a bellyache?

~ David Eddings

No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.

~ Edward R. Murrow

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the takingit away from those who have a different complexion or slightlyflatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you lookinto it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at theback of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and anunselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow downbefore, and offer a sacrifice to…

~ Joseph Conrad

Rejoicing in his absolute authority, the single egoist will exploit it methodically, whereas a mêlée of egoists will bring about a ruinous disorder and a disastrous cleavage, because the contrariety of the appetites to be satisfied will prevent the satisfaction of any single one. Clearly, then, the effect of the pursuit of private ends under cover of the public good will be worse if there are many with a hand in power than if there is only one.

~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

Both of these positions, inevitability and eternity, are antihistorical. The only thing that stands between them is history itself. History allows us to see patterns and make judgments. It sketches for us the structures within which we can seek freedom. It reveals moments, of each of them different, none entirely unique. To understand one moment is to see the possibility of being the cocreator of another. History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something. The Polish poet Czesław Miłosz thought that such a notion of responsibility worked against loneliness and indifference. History gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have.

~ Timothy Snyder

Ethics and oversight are what you eliminate when you want absolute power.

~ Dashanne Stokes

The only way to ensure democracy functions correctly is to question its governance constantly. Fail to do so and you may awake to find yourself living in a police state.

~ Stewart Stafford

On the levels of politics and theology, beauty is perfectly compatible with nonsense and tyranny. Which is very fortunate; for if beauty were incompatible with non­sense and tyranny, there would be precious little art in the world. The masterpieces of painting, sculpture and architecture were produced as religious or political propaganda, for the greater glory of a god, a govern­ment or a priesthood. But most kings and priests have been despotic and all religions have been riddled with superstition. Genius has been the servant of tyranny and art has advertised the merits of the local cult. Time, as it passes, separates the good art from the bad meta­physics. Can we learn to make this separation, not after the event, but while it is actually taking place? That is the question.

~ Aldous Huxley

We live in an age of equivocal competency: if you want, you can be a competent dictator, a competent self-promoter, a competent terrorist. Just because you can do something well does not mean you should be doing it.

~ Clifford Cohen

The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned — would never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die.

~ Charles Dickens

... Whoever becomes master of a city accustomed to live in freedom and does no destroy it, may reckon on being destroyed by it. For if it should rebel, it can always screen itself under the name of liberty and its ancient laws, which no length of time, nor any benefit conferred will ever cause it to forget; and do what you will, and take what care you may, unless the inhabitants be scattered and dispersed, this name, and the old order of things, will never cease to be remembered...

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

Other forces were at work besides conformism. But without the conformists, the great atrocities would have been impossible.

~ Timothy Snyder

The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.

~ Timothy Snyder

At the end of a century that has seenthe evils of communism, Nazism and other modern tyrannies,the impulse to centralize power remains amazingly persistent.

~ Joseph Sobran

Our ancestors wholeheartedly sacrificed their lives to fight against tyranny, and we are allowing that very same tyranny to exist! Let us open our eyes!

~ Yanan Melo

Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.

~ Criss Jami

It seemed to me that all things were possible on the island, all tyrannies and cruelties, though in small; and if, in despite of what was possible, we lived at peace with another, surely this was proof that certain laws unknown to us held sway, or else that we had been following the promptings of our hearts all this time, and our hearts had not betrayed us.

~ J.m. Coetzee

I believe that love and peace are the right way to confront tyranny.

~ Nihad Sirees

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Evil comes often to a man with money; tyranny comes surely to him without it. I say this, who am Mathurin Kerbouchard, a homeless wanderer upon the earth's far roads. I speak as one who has known hunger and feast, poverty and riches, the glory of the sword and the humility of the defenseless. Hunger inspires no talent, and carried too far, it deadens the faculties and destroys initiative...

~ Louis L'amour

Just because he was not a monster did not mean he wouldn’t be treated as one.

~ Ross Turner

For every blissful moment you must an anguish meet.

~ Billie-Jo Williams

A wounded animal yet bears teeth

~ Billie-Jo Williams

There was a feeling on the air like the eve of the end of the world.

~ Billie-Jo Williams

Enclosed within the tyranny of our minds and there is where we are lost.

~ Robert Dodson

When one with honeyed words but evil mindPersuades the mob, great woes befall the state.

~ Euripides

The people who must never have power are the humorless. To impossible certainties of rectitude they ally tedium and uniformity.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.

~ Noah Webster

Weak men cannot handle power. It will either crush them, or they will use it to crush others

~ Jocelyn Murray