Best 462 quotes in «tyrants quotes» category

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

Sovereignty over any foreign land is insecure.

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

Spineless politics do not change the mind of a tyrant.

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

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.

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.

That cruelest of tyrants - public opinion.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The method of rule of the tyrant and the oligarch is quite simply to clobber, coerce, or overawe all or most other groups in the interest of their own.

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

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

The monster has escaped Elba!" "The tyrant has landed at Cannes!" "Bonaparte meets the troops." "Napoleon approaches Paris." "His Imperial Majesty has entered the capital.

The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.

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

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 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 most horrible thing is not a government that stages public executions, but a government that secretly disposes of its victims.

The most dangerous kind of man is not the one who spent his youth shoving others around. That kind of man gets lazy, and is often too content with his life to be truly dangerous. The man who spent his youth being shoved around, however … When that man gets a little power and authority, he often uses it to become a tyrant on par with the worst warlords in history.

There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free.

The people cannot be all, and always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.

The poor ego has a still harder time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and it has to do its best to reconcile the claims and demands of all three...The three tyrants are the external world, the superego, and the id.