Best 462 quotes in «tyrants quotes» category

Set before us the conduct of our own British ancestors, who defended for us the inherent rights of mankind against foreign and domestic tyrants and usurpers, against arbitrary kings and cruel priests; in short against the gates of earth and hell.

Shakespeare wrote great poetry and preposterous plays. Who really cares, for example, which petty tyrant rules Milan? Or who succeeds to the throne of Denmark? Or why the barons ganged up on Richard II?

Since bad men find the rule of kings no less burdensome than that of tyrants, the recognition of the right of private citizens to kill tyrants involves rather more chance of losing a king than of being relieved of a tyrant.

Since the creation of the world there has been no tyrant like Intemperance, and no slaves so cruelly treated as his.

Slavery discourages arts and manufacturing ...[and] every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.

Slaves would be tyrants were the chance theirs.

[Slave] trade ... is the most shocking violation of the law of nature, has a direct tendency to diminish ... liberty, and makes every dealer in it a tyrant, from the director of an African company to the petty chapman [peddler].... It is a clear truth, that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.

Social and cultural change, however desirable, should not be effected by the engines of national power. Let us, through persuasion and education, seek to improve institutions we deem defective. But let us, in doing so, respect the orderly processes of the law. Any other course enthrones tyrants and dooms freedom.

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.

Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.

Sovereignty over any foreign land is insecure.

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobedience of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men

Spineless politics do not change the mind of a tyrant.

Speak to me, Jacob, do not play the tyrant. Speak to me.

Still when the lust of tyrant power succeeds, some Athens perishes, or some Tully bleeds.

That cruelest of tyrants - public opinion.

Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavor to keep women in the dark because, the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing.

Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same thing as a monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari.

That is why our masters in Washington are so anxious to disarm us. They are not afraid of criminals. They are afraid of a populace which cannot be subdued by tyrants.

The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.

That slow poison [slavery] is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our people. Every gentlemen here is born a petty tyrant, practiced in acts of despotism and cruelty.

That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.

The Allies had made war on Napoleon as a tyrant and an oppressor of nations; yet once they had him out of the way, they did him the favor of representing him as the torch bearer of the French Revolution. They did him the further favor of repeating his mistakes and besting him at them.

The Bible has, amazingly- no doubt with supernatural grace-survived its critics. The harder tyrants try to eliminate it and skeptics dismiss it, the better read it becomes.

The civil authority, or that part of it which remained faithful to their trust and true to the ends of the covenant, did, in answer to their consciences, turn out a tyrant, in a way which the Christians in aftertimes will mention with honor, and all tyrants in the world look at with fear.

The big tyrants never face justice.

The chains of military despotism, once fastened upon a nation, ages might pass away before they could be shaken off.

The child learns so easily because he has a natural gift, but adults, because they are tyrants, ignore natural gifts and say that children must learn through the same process that they learned by. We insist upon forced mental feeding and our lessons

The dignity of this end of endowment of man's life with new commodity appeareth by the estimation that antiquity made of such as guided thereunto ; for whereas founders of states, lawgivers, extirpators of tyrants, fathers of the people, were honoured but with the titles of demigods, inventors ere ever consecrated among the gods themselves.

The common excuse for those bringing misfortune on others is that they desire their good.

The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.

The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants, but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.

The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly Weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab.

The envious pine at others' success; no greater punishment than envy was devised by Sicilian tyrants.

The educated ones leave, the ones with the potential to right the wrongs. They leave the weak behind. The tyrants continue to reign because the weak cannot resist. Do you not see that it is a cycle? Who will break that cycle?

The end of despots is always odd?exhilarating to those who suffered their tyrannies, and to those who hold despotism in contempt, and anti-climatic at the same time, the discovery that these tyrants were petty, frightened men after all.

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

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

The goal of tyrants is tyranny, and the goal of tyranny is tyranny.

The hand of Vengeance found the Bed To which the Purple Tyrant fled The iron hand crush'd the tyrant's head And became Tyrant in his stead.

The government is a tyrant living by theft, and therefore has no business to engage in any business.

the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.

The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good. Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.

The idea of perfection can be a tyrant you should overthrow, to gain your freedom.

The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nations, and from the mass of the nation only-not from its privileged classes.

The King has degenerated into a tyrant and forfeits all rights to his subjects' obedience.

The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong, or by the tyrant's threatening countenance.

The moment a man claims a right to control the will of a fellow being by physical force, he is at heart a slaveholder.