Tyranny Quotes

I'm all for fighting tyranny and oppression.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

Surround yourself with people too afraid to speak, and you left yourself to only your own ideas. That could be disastrous. It was important to have men who would question you and see flaws in your plans, so long as you could control them. It was all about control.

~ Brandon Sanderson

The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.

~ George Orwell

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

~ Bertrand Russell

There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.

~ William Hazlitt

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

What Churchill described as the twin marauders of war and tyranny have been almost entirely banished from our continent. Today, hundreds of millions dwell in freedom, from the Baltic to the Adriatic, from the Western Approaches to the Aegean.

~ David Cameron

While we are under the tyranny of Priests, it will ever be their interest, to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith.

~ Ethan Allen

Death is softer by far than tyranny.

~ Aeschylus

Tens of thousands of brave Americans died to break the chains of British tyranny so that the principles of our Declaration of Independence could take fold and flourish in the birth of a new nation.

~ Jim Gerlach

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

~ Thomas Paine

Well, the tyranny of masculinity and the tyranny of patriarchy I think has been much more deadly to men than it has to women. It hasn't killed our hearts. It's killed men's hearts. It's silenced them; it's cut them off.

~ Eve Ensler

I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.

~ Susan B. Anthony

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

~ Edmund Burke

Seventy years ago this November, Vladimir Lenin created the modern totalitarian state, transforming simpler forms of tyranny into history's most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror.

~ Michael Johns

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.

~ David Hume

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it; and this I know, my lords: that where law ends, tyranny begins.

~ William Pitt

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

~ Thomas Jefferson

The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.

~ Mikhail Bakunin

If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates', then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.

~ Dee Hock

Virtues, like viruses, have their seasons of contagion. When catastrophe strikes, generosity spikes like a fever. Courage spreads in the face of tyranny.

~ Nancy Gibbs

I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past.

~ Clara Barton

He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to Defender of the Faith, than George the Third.

~ Thomas Paine

For somehow this disease inheres in tyranny, never to trust one's friends.

~ Aeschylus

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

~ Socrates

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

~ Samuel Butler

We have the universe to roam in in imagination. It is our virtue to be infinitely varied. The worst tyranny is uniformity.

~ George William Russell

It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government.

~ Alexander Hamilton

Democratic forms of government are vulnerable to mass prejudice, the so-called tyranny of the majority.

~ Maggie Gallagher

Peace without justice is tyranny.

~ William Allen White

We all want peace. Unfortunately, there are times when peace must be defended by fighting terror and tyranny.

~ James H. Douglas

Tyranny will make an entire population into readers of poetry.

~ Joseph Brodsky

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

~ James Madison

In the first 50 years of the filibuster, it was used only 35 times. But the last Congress alone had 112 cloture motions filed, plus threats of more. This is the tyranny of the minority.

~ Peter Fenn

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

~ Edmund Burke

The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.

~ Maximilien Robespierre

Our culture is just a series of checks and balances. The whole idea that we're in a battle between tyranny and freedom - it's a series of pendulum swings.

~ Jon Stewart

Freedom is not won by merely overthrowing a tyrannical ruler or an oppressive regime. That is usually only the prelude to a new tyranny, a new oppression.

~ Jonathan Sacks

When more Americans prefer freebies to freedom, these great United States will become a fertile ground for tyranny.

~ Allen West

Freedom is never easily won, but once established, freedom lasts, spreads and chokes out tyranny.

~ Trent Lott