Best 462 quotes in «tyrants quotes» category

Custom governs the world; it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners and rules the world with the hand of a despot.

Death is the tyrant of the imagination.

Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant; resurrection does not make a covenant with death, it overthrows it.

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.

Degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors. Time has proven that illustrious tyrants are succeeded by scoundrels.

Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant.

Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants.

Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant; democracy, to many.

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

Despotic governments do not recognize the precious human component of the state, seeing its citizens only as a faceless, mindless -- and helpless -- mass to be manipulated at will. It is as though people were incidental to a nation rather than its very life-blood.

Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

Dictators from the past, tyrants, were not unaware that it is easier to govern and enslave a nation of drinkers than that of abstainers.

Dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant can trickle when she wounds!

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Each man has an equal social right to multiply his power of motion by all the social factors of civilization. Private property in any of these factors is inconsistent with this fundamental right; it must, obviously, prove a source of economic despotism and industrial slavery.

Dreams can be relentless tyrants.

Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.

Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis. He snatched the lightning from the sky and the sceptre from tyrants.

Every rabbit-nation will find its tyrant! Oppressors are the destiny of coward and submissive nations!

Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of EMERGENCY.

Every man may reign secure in his petty tyranny, and spread terror and desolation around him, until the trump of the archangel shall excite different emotions in his soul.

Every one with this writ may be a tyrant in a legal manner, also may control, imprison, or murder any one within the realm.

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires.

E?  loquence quipersuade par douceur, non par empire, en tyran, non en roi. Eloquence should persuade gently, not by force or like a tyrant or king.

Every tyrant who ever lived has believed in freedom — for himself.

Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake.

Fantastic tyrant of the amorous heart. How hard thy yoke, how cruel thy dart. Those escape your anger who refuse your sway, and those are punished most, who most obey.

Fate is the friend of the good, the guide of the wise, the tyrant of the foolish, the enemy of the bad.

Fear is a psychic tyrant that has no intention of letting its slave go free. It will say whatever it needs to say to confuse your thinking... It will always seek to preserve itself.

For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men's property. To such a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.

Few tyrants go down to the infernal regions by a natural death.

Flight is lawful, when one flies from tyrants.

Few governments in the world, for example, praise human rights more ardently than does the government of France, and few have a worse record of supporting tyrants and killers.

Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.

Formerly, when a king died at Versailles the reign of his successor was immediately announced by the cry: "The king is dead, long live the king", in order to make it understood that despotism is immortal! Now an entire people, moved by a sublime instinct, cried: Long live the Republic! to teach the universe that tyranny died with the tyrant.

For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant - Moammar Gaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world - including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents.

Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.

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

Great Ambition, unchecked by principle, or the love of Glory, is an unruly Tyrant.

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

Governments which have a regard to the common interest are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic, whereas a state is a community of freemen.

Herein lies a riddle: How can a people so gifted by God become so seduced by naked power, so greedy for money, so addicted to violence, so slavish before mediocre and treacherous leadership, so paranoid, deluded, lunatic?

Have you ever heard of a woman bloody dictator or tyrant? I think not. If there were more women in power, I think we would have more harmony, more engagement and less suffering and less conflict.

Heap up great wealth in your house, if you wish, and live as a tyrant, but, if the enjoyment of these things be lacking, I would not buy the rest for the shadow of smoke as against happiness.

Here Fashion is a despot, and no one dreams of evading its dictates.

History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.

He that by harshness of nature rules his family with an iron hand is as truly a tyrant as he who misgoverns a nation.