Top 100 A Tyrant Quotes
#1. a tyrant, and a conqueror. He was never elected to the office. He would probably laugh at the idea. And if he did somehow decide to hold elections, he would magic the masses into electing him, because he would honestly believe that he was best qualified to rule wisely. Having
Ilona Andrews
#2. I firmly believed we should not march into Baghdad ... To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab
world against us and make a broken tyrant, into a latter-day Arab hero.
George H. W. Bush
#3. O serpent heart hid with a flowering face!
Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant, feind angelical, dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of devinest show, just opposite to what thou justly seemest - A dammed saint, an honourable villain!
William Shakespeare
#4. We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.
Carl Levin
#5. It is lawful and hath been held so through all ages for any one who have the power to call to account a tyrant or wicked king, and after due conviction to depose and put him to death.
John Milton
#6. She just liked the name, because, for a five-foot-tall girl, pygmy tyrant sounded like a career. All
Maggie Stiefvater
#7. I don't think I could be happy as an actor if there was a tyrant on the set.
David Warner
#8. The law is an expression of God 's holy will and as such must be honored and loved," said the preacher piously. "Rubbish," said the Master. "The law is a necessary evil and as such must be cut down to the barest minimum. Show me a lover of the law and I will show you a muttonheaded tyrant .
Anthony De Mello
#9. Cruelty is a tyrant that's always attended with fear.
Thomas Fuller
#10. A tyrant can make anything seem to be 'the will of the people.
Claudia Gray
#11. As long as man loves a phantom in the sky more than he loves his fellow man, there will never be peace upon this earth; so long as man worships a Tyrant as the "Fatherhood of God," there will never be a "Brotherhood of Man.
Joseph Lewis
#12. A tyrant does not remain in the world; But the curse on him abides forever!
Bill Vaughan
#13. In the year 540 B.C. or thereabouts, on the island of Samos, there came to power a tyrant named Polycrates. He seems to have started as a caterer and then gone on to international piracy.
Carl Sagan
#14. Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us. We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes. But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep it.
Blaise Pascal
#15. Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity. Intellectual
Mary Oliver
#16. If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher's cleaver.
Lord Byron
#17. To have reservations is to show true leadership. To have certainty without question, to lead people to battle with no qualms, or to prosecute without hesitation are qualities of a tyrant.
Laura Kreitzer
#18. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.
Etienne De La Boetie
#19. What do you mean? he asked. Beginning with the State, I replied, would you say that a city which is governed by a tyrant is free or enslaved? No city, he said, can be more completely enslaved. And
Plato
#20. This is the story of a girl who fooled a thousand boys, a boy who fooled an entire country, a partnership that would change the fate of realms, and a power to challenge the greatest tyrant the world had ever known. Expect magic.
Sherry Thomas
#21. A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
Aristotle.
#22. Public opinion, - a tyrant, sitting in the dark, wrapt up in mystification and vague terrors of obscurity; deriving power no one knows from whom ... - but irresistible in its power to quell thought, to repress action, to silence conviction ...
Harriet Martineau
#23. The Allies had made war on Napoleon as a tyrant and an oppressor of nations; yet once they had got him out of the way, they did him the favor of representing him as the torchbearer of the French Revolution. They did him the further favor of repeating his mistakes and besting him at them.
J. Christopher Herold
#24. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities.
George Mason
#25. Because if you don't know how to manage time, time can rule you like a tyrant.
Frank Partnoy
#26. When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato
#27. When a man tells me he's run out of steam in the sex department, I'll tell him, 'Count your blessings; you've escaped from the clutches of a cruel tyrant. Enjoy!
Richard J. Needham
#28. The greatest crimes are not those committed for the sake of necessity but those committed for the sake of superfluity. One does not become a tyrant to avoid exposure to the cold.
Aristotle.
#29. Behold Akar Kessell, the Tyrant of Icewind Dale!" he cried. "People of Ten-Towns, your master has come!" "Your words are a bit premature - " Cassius began, but Kessell cut him short with a frenzied scream. "Never interrupt me!" the wizard shouted,
R.A. Salvatore
#30. For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?
Kahlil Gibran
#31. 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.
Benito Mussolini
#32. If you are too weak to give yourselves your own law, then a tyrant shall lay his yoke upon you and say: "Obey! Clench your teeth and obey!" And all good and evil shall be drowned in obedience to him.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#33. Since bad men find the rule of kings no less burdensome than that of tyrants, the recognition of the right of private citizens to kill tyrants involves rather more chance of losing a king than of being relieved of a tyrant.
William Archibald Dunning
#34. 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.
Emile M. Cioran
#35. There is bound to be a certain amount of trouble running any country. If you are president, the trouble happens to you. But if you are a tyrant you can arrange things so that most of the trouble happens to other people.
Don Marquis
#36. I never revolted in vain, as a rebel or as a tyrant, but I rose seeking reformation for the nation of my grandfather Mohammad. I intend to enjoin good and forbid evil, to act according to the traditions of my grandfather, and my father Ali Ibn Abi-Talib.
Husayn Ibn Ali
#37. Lord X was a tyrant, not a revolutionary. He wanted to take over the system, not change it.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#38. The only difference between a futile madman and an effective tyrant is power and will.
Sheri S. Tepper
#39. Instead of trying to see things my way, I try to see things her [wife's] way, and if it honestly makes sense then I will submit to her instead of being a tyrant and a dictator.
Tony Gaskins
#40. Nor is the guilt entirely with the warmongers, plutocrats and demagogues. If people permit exploitation and regimentation in any name, they deserve their slavery. A tyrant does not make his tyranny possible. It is made by the people and not otherwise.
Jack Parsons
#41. As Yazid, the tyrant of Karbala, never suffered even from a headache, people believed that he was blessed by Allah. But that was a misinterpretation. In reality, Allah had abandoned him completely. He wanted nothing to do with him.
Tehmina Durrani
#42. A tyrant is the worst disease, and the cause of all others.
William Blake
#43. Muse is a tyrant. It gets you out of bed in the twilight of the morning and forces you to create something!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#44. The just man having a firm grasp of his intentions, neither the heated passions of his fellow men ordaining something awful, nor a tyrant staring him in the face, will shake in his convictions.
Horace
#45. The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.
John Adams
#46. In a despotic government, the only principle by which the tyrant who is to move the whole machine means to regulate and manage the people is fear, by the servile dread of his power. But a free government, which of all others is far the most preferable, cannot be supported without virtue.
Samuel Williams
#48. Custom governs the world; it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners and rules the world with the hand of a despot.
Bill Vaughan
#49. A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover
but will sooner or later find a tyrant.
George Gordon Byron
#51. The worst kind of tyrant was the one who once had been the victim.
John A. Williams
#52. I do identify the escape hatch through which Foucault eludes the charge that he himself is an author/authority, hence a tyrant. He establishes the category of "founder of discursivity" for the authors he likes. Slippery, perhaps, but you can see what he means.
Paul Fry
#53. The government is a tyrant living by theft, and therefore has no business to engage in any business.
Benjamin Tucker
#54. What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant.
C.S. Lewis
#55. Now you fear punishment and beg for your lives, so I will let you free, if not for any other reason so that you can see the difference between a Greek king and a barbarian tyrant, so do not expect to suffer any harm from me. A king does not kill messengers.
Alexander The Great
#56. Every one with this writ may be a tyrant; if this commission be legal, a tyrant in a legal manner, also, may control, imprison, or murder any one within the realm.
James Otis
#57. There is only one thing that can never go past a certain point in its alliance with oppression
and that is orthodoxy. I may, it is true, twist orthodoxy so as partly to justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely.
G.K. Chesterton
#58. A tyrant remains a tyrant no matter how benevolently he may philosophize and smile,
David I. Kertzer
#59. Dr. John, throughout his whole life, was a man of luck - a man of success. And why? Because he had the eye to see his opportunity, the heart to prompt to well-timed action, the nerve to consummate a perfect work. And no tyrant-passion dragged him back; no enthusiasms, no foibles encumbered his way.
Charlotte Bronte
#60. She is a tyrant much in the way of a bad novelist, who shapes his characters according to his own ideology or desires and never allows them the space to become themselves.
Azar Nafisi
#61. 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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#62. Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake.
Edgar Wallace
#63. Unmasking the intentions of a Satanic character: He cannot be both counselor and tyrant.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#64. I would rather deal with a tyrant any day than a committee. Committees, as a general rule, aren't willing to take chances, which is why you have a committee in the first place - so you can share the blame.
Hal Riney
#65. 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?"'
Steve Williams
#66. No eunuch flatters his tyrant more shamefully or seeks by more infamous means to stimulate his jaded appetite, in order to gain some favor, than does the eunuch of industry, the entrepreneur, in order to acquire a few silver coins or to charm the gold from the purse of his dearly beloved neighbor.
Karl Marx
#68. [It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant.
Thomas Jefferson
#69. For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant - Moammar Gaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world - including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents.
Barack Obama
#70. Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
Ambrose Bierce
#71. How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!
Samuel Adams
#73. My anger spiked. I should have stabbed the Komizar again. Carved him up like a holiday goose, then brought his head back skewered on a sword and showed it to the crowds as proof that I had no love for the tyrant.
Mary E. Pearson
#74. A tardy vengeance shares the tyrant's guilt.
Edward Young
#75. Come gather 'round hardy men of the steppes and listen to my tale of heroes bold and friendships fast and the Tyrant of Icenwind Dale of a band of friends by trick or by deed bred legends for the bard the baneful pride of the one poor wretch and the horror of the Crystal Shard.
R.A. Salvatore
#76. The automobile, which began as a transportation convenience, has become a bloody tyrant (50,000 lives a year), and it is the responsibility of the park service, as well as that of everyone else concerned with preserving both wilderness and civilization, to begin a campaign of resistance.
Edward Abbey
#77. If you cannot tell me another way, do not brand me a tyrant.
David Gaider
#78. Art is a tyrant. It demands heart, brain, soul, body. The entireness of the votary. Nothing less will win its highest favor. I wed art. It is my husband, my world, my life dream, the air I breathe. I know nothing else, feel nothing else, think nothing else.
Rosa Bonheur
#79. The popular image [in England] of Bonaparte as a blood-stained tyrant and bandit was admittedly exaggerated, but instinct told even the most radical among the English that if liberty, equality, and justice were ever to come to their shores, it certainly was not Napoleon who would bring them there.
J. Christopher Herold
#80. Truth is a tyrant-the only tyrant to whom we can give our allegiance. The service of truth is a matter of heroism.
John F. Kennedy
#81. Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant; resurrection does not make a covenant with death, it overthrows it.
N. T. Wright
#83. Bad government, like good government, is a spiritual thing. Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant,
G.K. Chesterton
#84. The planet's tyrant, dotard Death, had held his gray mirror before them for a moment and shown them the image of things to come.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#85. I will never, for the future, paint the portrait of a tyrant until his head lies before me on the scaffold.
Jacques-Louis David
#86. 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.
Thomas Jefferson
#87. Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant. I am glad he is now on trial for crimes against humanity. But, opposition to a dictator is not the measure I use when deciding whether to send our men and women in uniform off to war and possible death.
Peter DeFazio
#88. Cruelty had been his weapon. But such a tool is dangerous and can spread further than you intend.
Ross Turner
#90. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Benjamin Franklin
#91. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.
Etienne De La Boetie
#92. Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant ... must not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves.
Aesop
#93. He that by harshness of nature rules his family with an iron hand is as truly a tyrant as he who misgoverns a nation.
Seneca The Younger
#94. According to the Bible a tyrant is somebody, some civil magistrate that seeks to impose upon it's people another law than the law of God; that derives it policies and it's laws from another source of law, than the source of the law of God contained in Holy Scripture.
Joseph C. Morecraft III
#96. The glory of God is not that of a despotic tyrant, but the splendour of love before which we fall not in abject terror but lost in wonder, love and praise.
William Barclay
#97. The idea of perfection can be a tyrant you should overthrow, to gain your freedom.
Kate Grenville
#98. Virtue cannot dwell with slaves, nor reign O'er those who cower to take a tyrant's yoke.
William C. Bryant
#99. A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.
Bertrand Russell
#100. Fear was stronger than ethics, stronger than judgement, stronger than responsibility, stronger than civilisation. Fear was a bolting animal trampling children underfoot as it fled from itself. Fear was a bigot, a tyrant, a coward, a red mist, a whore. Fear was a bullet pointed at his heart.
Salman Rushdie
