TYRANNY QUOTES V

quotations about tyrants and tyranny

Of all the tyrannies on human kind
The worst is that which persecutes the mind.

JOHN DRYDEN

The Hind and the Panther

Tags: John Dryden


Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

CHARLES PEGUY

Oeuvres en prose


One submits to tyranny when one renounces the difference between what one wants to hear and what is actually the case.

MICHAEL BRIGUGLIO

"How is a tyrant identified?", Times of Malta, May 1, 2017


A tyrant has the least respect for one whom he can conquer.

LEWIS F. KORNS

Thoughts

Tags: Lewis F. Korns


Consider those grand agents and lieutenants of the devil, by whom he scourges and plagues the world under him, to-wit, tyrants; and was there ever any tyrant who was not also false and perfidious?

ROBERT SOUTH

Twelve Sermons


What, in short, is the whole system of Europe towards America but an atrocious and insulting tyranny? One hemisphere of the earth, separated from the other by wide seas on both sides, having a different system of interests flowing from different climates, different soils, different productions, different modes of existence, and its own legal relations and duties, is made subservient to all the petty interests of the other, to their laws, their regulations, their passions and wars, and interdicted from social intercourse, from the interchange of mutual duties and comforts with their neighbors, enjoined on all men by the laws of nature. Happily these abuses of human rights are drawing to a close on both our continents, and are not likely to survive the present mad contest of the lions and tigers of the other.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

letter to Clement Caine, September 16, 1811

Tags: Thomas Jefferson


Stability born of tyranny is a false stability.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE

"The moral and practical case for democracy promotion", FOX News, May 9, 2017


A company of tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions.

VOLTAIRE

Dictionnaire philosophique

Tags: Voltaire


Tyrants in the course of time must eventually be overthrown because of the continual opposition of the oppressed. It is an unchanging Law, a constant rule, the penalty is certain, albeit that it is very slow coming to fruition.

FRANCESCO MARIO PAGANO

Saggi Politici


It is right to destroy a tyrant, and sacrifice self, if it saves the country and rids the world of a monster.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

attributed, Day's Collacon


In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.

AESCHYLUS

Prometheus Bound

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Tyrants are rebels against the first laws of heaven and society: to oppose their ravages is an instinct of nature, the inspiration of God in the heart of man.

JOSIAH QUINCY

Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy


The fundamental article of my political creed is, that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor; equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical.

JOHN ADAMS

letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 13, 1815

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If we should look under the skirt of the prosperous and prevailing tyrant, we should find, even in the days of his joys, such allays and abatements of his pleasure, as may serve to represent him presently miserable, besides his final infelicities.... And although all tyrants have not imaginative and fantastic consciences, yet all tyrants shall die and come to judgment; and such a man is not to be feared, not at all to be envied. And, in the mean time, can he be said to escape who hath an unquiet conscience, who is already designed for hell, he whom God hates, and the people curse, and who hath an evil name, and against whom all good men pray, and many desire to fight, and all wish him destroyed, and some contrive to do it? Is this a blessed man?

JEREMY TAYLOR

Sermon XXXV, The Sermons of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor

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Clever tyrants are never punished; they have always some slight shade of virtue: they support the laws before destroying them.

VOLTAIRE

Mérope

Tags: Voltaire


No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)

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When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

PLATO

The Republic

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It is better to have one tyrant than a hundred; one may demand two-thirds of all you possess; the hundred will pick you to the bone.

THEODORE DWIGHT

attributed, Day's Collacon


Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny.... They're organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.

FRANK HERBERT

Dune Messiah

Tags: Frank Herbert


It is easier to repress the advances of tyranny at first, than to destroy it when once established.

SOLON

attributed, Day's Collacon