Best 276 quotes in «tyranny quotes» category

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

...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 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 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 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, 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice.

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.

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.

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.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

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

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

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

I shall never cease to marvel at the way we beg for love and tyranny.

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.

In a land of freedom we are held hostage by the tyranny of political correctness.

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

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

It is the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.

It is harder to maintain the balance of freedom than it is to endure the weight of tyranny.

It is a government by the corporations, for the corporations.

Laughter takes the tyranny of the lies we are told and told and told and it blows them apart.

It's the tyranny of an oligarchy that I'm concerned about.

Socialism is just another form of tyranny.

None but tyrants have any business to be afraid.

Once you get a tyranny, you don't easily get rid of it. Much better to remember about eternal vigilance.

People get good gigs because they stand up....You don't get picked. Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.

Plurality which is not reduced to unity is confusion; unity which does not depend on plurality is tyranny.

Power never takes a back step only in the face of more power.