Best 276 quotes in «tyranny quotes» category

We heard of this woman who was out of control. We heard that she was led by her feelings. That her emotions were violent. That she was impetuous. That she violated tradition and overrode convention. That certainly her life should not be an example to us. (The life of the plankton, she read in this book on the life of the earth, depends on the turbulence of the sea) We were told that she moved too hastily. Placed her life in the stream of ideas just born. For instance, had a child out of wedlock, we were told. For instance, refused to be married. For instance, walked the streets alone, where ladies never did, and we should have little regard for her, even despite the brilliance of her words. (She read that the plankton are slightly denser than water) For she had no respect for boundaries, we were told. And when her father threatened her mother, she placed her body between them. (That because of this greater heaviness, the plankton sink into deeper waters) And she went where she should not have gone, even into her sister's marriage. And because she imagined her sister to be suffering what her mother had suffered, she removed her sister from that marriage. (And that these deeper waters provide new sources of nourishment) That she moved from passion. From unconscious feeling, allowing deep and troubled emotions to control her soul. (But if the plankton sinks deeper, as it would in calm waters, she read) But we say that to her passion, she brought lucidity (it sinks out of the light, and it is only the turbulence of the sea, she read) and to her vision, she gave the substance of her life (which throws the plankton back to the light). For the way her words illuminated her life we say we have great regard. We say we have listened to her voice asking, "of what materials can that heart be composed which can melt when insulted and instead of revolting at injustice, kiss the rod?" (And she understood that without light, the plankton cannot live and from the pages of this book she also read that the animal life of the oceans, and hence our life, depends on the plankton and thus the turbulence of the sea for survival.) By her words we are brought to our own lives, and are overwhelmed by our feelings which we had held beneath the surface for so long. And from what is dark and deep within us, we say, tyranny revolts us; we will not kiss the rod.

We just can't trust the American people to make those types of choices.... Government has to make those choices for people.

We let it happen, we occasioned this horror. And we continue to occasion, it happens, we are still men.

We live in an age of equivocal competency: if you want, you can be a competent dictator, a competent self-promoter, a competent terrorist. Just because you can do something well does not mean you should be doing it.

Well, you know what men are. Anything new gets them in.

We not only do not believe that man is punished for his 'sins,' but emphatically state that there is no such thing as sin. There are wrongs and injustices, but no sin. Sin, like purgatory and hell, was invented by priests, first to frighten, and then to rob the living. We do not fear these myths and curses, and that is why we devote our time and energies to help our fellow man. That is why we build educational institutions and seek, by a slow and painful process, to teach man the true nature of the universe and a proper understanding of his place as a member in society. At the same time we try to fortify his mind with courage to withstand the rebuffs, the trials and tribulations of life. That it is a difficult and arduous task no one can deny because we cannot correct all of 'God's mistakes' in one life time. As Ingersoll so succinctly states: 'Nature cannot pardon.' Remember this: You are not a depraved human being. You have no sins to atone for. There is no need for fear. There are no ghosts—holy or otherwise. Stop making yourself miserable for 'the love of God.' Drive this monster of tyrannic fear from your mind, and enjoy the inestimable freedom of an emancipated human being.

What are the present governments of Europe, but a scene of iniquity and oppression? What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say, It is a market where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic, at the expense of a deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French Revolution is traduced.

What drives me is the fear of forgetting the stories. I don't feel threatened: I see a darkness preparing to fall upon them. Write ... write, I say to myself, or everything will whirl into forgetfulness. Write so the thread won't be severed ... a thousand stories are too few. So the flow won't be broken, so the lamps over the desks won't go out. Write, or you'll be without a past, nothing but a will-less plaything of bureaucracy. You'll lie stored in their databases, retrievable, a calculation, an accounting factor, just part of a sum whose loss was factored in from the beginning ... you'll be cannon fodder.

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

What manner of men had lived in those days...who had so eagerly surrendered their sovereignty for a lie and a delusion? Why had they been so anxious to believe that the government could solve problems for them which had been pridefully solved, many times over, by their fathers? Had their characters become so weak and debased, so craven and emasculated, that offers of government dole had become more important than their liberty and their humanity? Had they not know that power delegated to the government becomes the club of tyrants? They must have known. They had their own history to remember, and the history of five thousand years. Yet, they had willingly and knowingly, with all this knowledge, declared themselves unfit to manage their own affairs and had placed their lives, which belonged to God only, in the hands of sinister men who had long plotted to enslave them, by wars, by "directives," by "emergencies." In the name of the American people, the American people had been made captive.

When a governing class can permit itself anything in the name of a sovereign who can do anything, it undergoes a real moral degeneration, the degeneration that is common to all men whose acts are exempt from the restraint that the opinion and the conscience of their fellows ordinarily impose. When responsibility in subordinates in the end is one with irresponsibility and omnipotence in the man or in the little group of men standing at the head of the official hierarchy as a whole - call that man czar or sultan, or that group a Committee of Public Safety - the vices that absolutism generates in its leaders are communicated downwards to the whole political structure. Anything may be ventured when one is interpreting the will, real or imaginary, of a person who thinks he cannot possibly see everything and who does not have free and disinterested consciences about him to control his passions and correct his mistakes.

When civilians kill, it is called murder. When governments kill, it is called patriotism.

When civilians kill, it is called murder. When governments kill, it is called pragmatism.

When governments murder those who speak the truth, it is time to get new governments.

Where did this absurd rule come from, and why did we so meekly obey it? Under a tyrannical regime--and the Ireland of those days was a spiritual tyranny--the populace becomes so cowed that it does the state's work for it voluntarily. And as every tyrant knows, a people's own self-censorship is the kind that works best. In the 1990s, when revelations of clerical sexual abuse and the Catholic Church's cover-ups put an end to its hegemony almost overnight, my generation scratched its head and asked, in voices trembling with incredulity, 'How could we let them get away with it for so long?' But the question, of course, contained its own answer: We let them get away with it. Power is more often surrendered than seized.

When we take the time to break free from the tyranny of Time and learn to listen to the sound of unspoken words, we discern the hot air behind the frenzy of the wheeling and dealing around. (“Wheeling and dealing »)

When you have something to say, silence is a lie—and tyranny feeds on lies.

Who can blame slaves for being cunning? They are constantly compelled to resort to it. It is the only weapon of the weak and oppressed against the strength of their tyrants.

Why is it, do you suppose," said Edward, "that the Continental breakfast has only to cross the Channel to be so damp and depressing. It seems simple enough; why does it travel so badly? In England one wonders whether it is really meant to be eaten. Here it is invariably ambrosial." "It is the tyranny of the toast rack," said Maria.

Yet in his own estimate, one theme in particular dominated all others: the growing tyranny of the majority, the ever-increasing and most formidable barriers raised by the majority around the free expression of opinion, and, as a result, the frightening oneness of American thinking, the absence of eccentricity and divergence from the norm. A perfect liberty of the Mind exists in America, said Tocqueville, just as long as the sovereign majority has yet to decide its course. But once the majority has made up its mind, then all contrary thought must cease, and all controversy must be abandoned, not at the risk of death or physical punishment, but rather at the more subtle and more intolerable pain of ostracism, of being shunned by one's fellows, of being rejected by society. Throughout history kings and princely rulers had sought without success to control human thought, that most elusive and invisible power of all. Yet where absolute monarchs had failed, democracy succeeds, for the strength of the majority is unlimited and all pervasive, and the doctrines of equality and majority rule have substituted for the tyranny of the few over the many the more absolute, imperious and widely accepted tyranny of the many over the few.

Woe is the mind of the common man, so easily controlled by the prospect of an ambition never to be truly attained. This is what tyrants live on and by what commoners are blissfully burdened and subdued.

Yes, from drinking too much beer and generally being a tyrannical egomaniac.

...you are strong only as long as you don't deprive people of everything. For a person you've taken everything from is no longer in your power. He's free all over again.

You can burn libraries, ban books, boycott scholars, and blacklist intellectuals, but you cannot blot out ideas.

You can't start with a democracy. You have to work up through stuff like tyranny and monarchy first. That way people are so relieved when they get to democracy that they hang on to it.

You can pass any law you like to make 'criminals' of those you don't like and then justify it with whatever stupid reasoning that appeals to you. Is that rule of law - or tyranny?

You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power—he's free again.

You want a picture of the future? Imagine a boot trampling a human face.. forever. The moral to be drawn from this nightmarish situation is simple: Don't let it happen. It depends on you.

You, up there: I hate you waking and sleeping. I will hate and curse you in the hour of my death. I will hate and curse you from my grave, and it will be your children and your children’s children who will have to bear my curse. I have no other weapon against you but this curse, I know that it withers the heart of him who utters it, I do not know if I will survive your downfall. But this I know, that a man must hate this Germany with all his heart if he really loves it. I would ten times rather die than see you triumph.

And of all plagues with which mankind are curst, Ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst.

A good deal of tyranny goes by the name of protection.

All tyranny, bigotry, aggression, and cruelty are wrong, and whenever we see it, we must never be silent.

A lot of people died fighting tyranny. The least I can do is vote against it.

Any unity which doesn't have its origin in the multitudes is tyranny.

Fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.

Aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice.

As usurpation is the exercise of power which another has a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to.

Bound as our lives are to the tyranny of time, it is through what we know of history that we are delivered from our bonds and escape - into time.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

A tyrant is the worst disease, and the cause of all others.

A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.

Beware of the tyranny of making small changes to small things. Rather, make big changes to big things.

Faith and force ... are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny.

Freedom is not won by merely overthrowing a tyrannical ruler or an oppressive regime. That is usually only the prelude to a new tyranny, a new oppression.

I believe that the power of literature is stronger than the power of tyranny.

Imprisonment in the contemporary is the worst of all intellectual tyrannies.

If anyone stumbles then he must repent. If anyone errs then he must repent. And no one must insist on (the path of) destruction. If anyone insists on tyranny then he is far away from the path

If it's a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.

I'm enjoying my life, post-menopause, so much. It's just so great to grow into yourself, and not be bothered with all that tyranny of biology.

I'm willing to be regarded as a tyrant to keep my vision intact.