Best 462 quotes in «tyrants quotes» category

But if one wishes to be absolute master of all, to obtain the entire inheritance, and to exclude his brothers from even a third or fifth part, he is not a brother, but a harsh tyrant, a rude savage, nay, more, an insatiable beast that would devour the whole sweet banquet with his own gaping mouth.

But they don't use law-they use law for their interests. They don't go by law, international, federal, local-nothing! They go by whatever is expedient to protect the interests that are at stake.

But we know that freedom cannot be served by the devices of the tyrant. As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence. And any who act as if freedoms defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.

But whether the resistance against government tyrants is non-violent or physically violent, the effort to overthrow state oppression qualifies as true patriotism.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

But you can't kill me, Lord Tyrant. I represent that one thing you've never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope.

By "trampling upon the helpless abroad" with unchecked surveillance, Americans have learned, "by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home.

Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.

Chivalry!---why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection---the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant ---Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.

Christianity is not a law of bondage; and if it respect the hand of God which sometimes raises up tyrants, it draws up where obedience degenerates into guilty cowardice.

Conformities are called for much more eagerly today than yesterday... skeptics, liberals, individuals with a taste for private life and their own inner standards of behavior, are objects of fear and derision and targets of persecution for either side... in the great ideological wars of our time.

Curst greed of gold, what crimes thy tyrant power has caused.

Cruelty is a tyrant that's always attended with fear.

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

Death is the tyrant of the imagination.

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

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

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 more cruel than wars or tyrants.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Dreams can be relentless tyrants.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Flight is lawful, when one flies from tyrants.

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.