Best 462 quotes in «tyrants quotes» category

A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste

A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

A great nation like the United States has many and varied interests, and we need both to do business with tyrants and to engage constantly in multilateral diplomacy.

A headline last year, after the death of Saddam Hussein, read: 'Tyrant is hanged'. My auntie looked at the newspaper and sobbed, 'Who's going to present "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"'

A hurt body and mind aren't just like a dictatorship; they are a dictatorship. There is no tyrant as merciless as pain, no despot so cruel as confusion.

A Jap's a Jap. There is no way to determine their loyalty... This coast is too vulnerable. No Jap should come back to this coast except on a permit from my office.

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. In order to flourish, the tree of Liberty needs the blood of patriots and tyrants.

All men would be tyrants if they could.

All my plans in private life; all my pursuits; all my designs, wishes, and thoughts, have this one great object in view: the overthrow of the ruffian Boroughmongers. If I write grammars; if I write on agriculture; if I sow, plant, or deal in seeds; whatever I do has first in view the destruction of those infamous tyrants.

All the cops are just workers for the one percent, and they don't even realize they're being exploited.

All three states - the Lacedaemonian, the Cretan, and the Carthaginian - nearly resemble one another, and are very different from any others. Many of the Carthaginian institutions are excellent. The superiority of their constitution is proved by the fact that the common people remains loyal to the constitution; the Carthaginians have never had any rebellion worth speaking of, and have never been under the rule of a tyrant.

A nation that enslaves another forges its own chains.

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic--the res- publica--has been settled, it is time to look after the res- privata,--the private state,--to see, as the Roman Senate charged its consuls, "ne quid res-PRIVATA detrimenti caperet," that the private state receive no detriment.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.

An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia to-day.

And then, the negro being doomed, and damned, and forgotten, to everlasting bondage, is the white man quite certain that the tyrant demon will not turn upon him too?

Another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one's own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard - every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals, which they serve.

An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland.

A new fascism promises security from the terror of crime. All that is required is that we take away the criminals' rights - which, of course, are our own. Out of our desperation and fear we begin to feel a sense of security from the new totalitarian state.

Any appeasement of tyranny is treason.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

Anywhere in the world if you see a president holding his chair tightly, that man is either a thief or a tyrant, and even worse than this, he is both!

Any ideal system is its own worst enemy, and as soon as you start to implement these visions of grandeur, they just fall apart and turn into a complete tyranny.

A popular license is indeed the many-headed tyrant.

A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free.

A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants.

A rebellion against a tyrant is only immoral when it hasn't got a chance.

As for the petty little world of journalism, the media demonstrates how it, more than anyone, is careful to traffic only in authorized ideas and wares; while at the same time it fosters, through its antics, the illusion of a free circulation of ideas and opinions - not unlike jesters in a tyrant's court.

As in Athens, the right to participate was restricted to men, just as it was also in all later democracies and republics until the twentieth century.

A strict belief in fate is the worst of slavery, imposing upon our necks an everlasting lord and tyrant, whom we are to stand in awe of night and day.

As William Penn put it: "Those people who are not governed by God will be ruled by tyrants." Remember... that those tyrants are often self-imposed roadblocks of your lower self at work.

A tyrant institutionalises stupidity, but he is the first servant of his own system and the first to be installed within it.

A tyrant does not remain in the world; But the curse on him abides forever!

A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

A wicked tyrant is better than a wicked war.

A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover - but will sooner or later find a tyrant.

Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

Bad men cannot make good citizens.

Be assured, fellow citizens, that in a democracy it is the laws that guard the person of the citizen and the constitution of the state, whereas the despot and the oligarch find their protection in suspicion and in armed guards.

Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.

Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain, It, makes us wander, wander earth around, To fly that tyrant Thought. As Atlas groan'd The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.

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.

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.