Quotes About Best Tyrants

#1. DANTON: Could you indeed? It's you idealists who make the best tyrants.
ROBESPIERRE: It seems a bit late to be having this conversation. I've had to take up violence now, and so much else. We should have discussed it last year.

Hilary Mantel

#2. There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.

Christian Nestell Bovee

#3. Adding an overarching tier of tyrants the EU to European governments has benefited Europeans as a second hangman enhances the health of a condemned man.

Ilana Mercer

#4. Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the "general welfare of the people." Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#5. I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe.

Deborah Sampson

#6. 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.

Jeff Cooper

#7. Neither can oath nor promise bind any such people to obey and maintain tyrants against God and against his truth known.

John Knox

#8. Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.

Anatole France

#9. The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.

Stendhal

#10. Creon: Why not? You and the whole breed of seers are mad for money.
Tiresias: And the whole race of tyrants lusts for filthy gain.

Sophocles

#11. 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

#12. Degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors. Time has proven that illustrious tyrants are succeeded by scoundrels.

Albert Einstein

#13. The ideal citizen of a tyrannical state is the man or woman who bows in silent obedience in exchange for the status of a well-cared-for herd animal. Thinking people become the tyrants worst enemies.

Claire Wolfe

#14. Saddam, as most tyrants, was a total control freak. He wanted total control of his regime. Total control of the country. And to introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do.

Bob Simon

#15. History immortalises both the names of the greats and the tyrants without making a distinction between them.

Aziz Hamza

#16. But whether the resistance against government tyrants is non-violent or physically violent, the effort to overthrow state oppression qualifies as true patriotism.

Ron Paul

#17. 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.

Fouad Ajami

#18. I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.

Eric Hoffer

#19. There is also a doubt as to what is to be the supreme power in the state: - Is it the multitude? Or the wealthy? Or the good? Or the one best man? Or a tyrant?

Aristotle.

#20. 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.

Sigmund Freud

#21. According to the faith and mercy of his Christian enemies, [Chosroes] sunk without hope into a still deeper abyss [Hell]; and it will not be denied, that tyrants of every age and sect are the best entitled to such infernal abodes.

Edward Gibbon

#22. Love is a tyrant, resisted.

John Ford

#23. We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place.

Pope Francis

#24. Despots are elected and deposed.
Laws are passed and repealed.
Nations rise and fall.
Individual liberty is eternal.

A.E. Samaan

#25. 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

#26. Very few tyrants argued for the slavery of the masses. Instead, they argued for their right to protect the people from themselves.

A.E. Samaan

#27. With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.

William Lloyd Garrison

#28. Few governments in the world, for example, praise human rights more ardently than does the government of France, and few have a worse record of supporting tyrants and killers.

Richard Perle

#29. Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants.

Timothy Snyder

#30. Modern man no longer regards Nature as in any sense divine and feels perfectly free to behave toward her as an overweening conqueror and tyrant.

Aldous Huxley

#31. The women's movement is filled with tyrants, just as men's political movements are equally filled.

Norman Mailer

#32. 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

#33. Whilst so much is being done in the world, to ameliorate the condition of mankind, and the spirit of Freedom is marching with rapid strides and causing tyrants to tremble, may America awake from the apathy in which she has long slumbered.

James Forten

#34. 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.

David Frum

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

Bill Vaughan

#36. Laugh at tyrants and the tragedy they inflict. Such men welcome our tears as evidence of subservience, but our laughter condemns them to ignominy.

Dean Koontz

#37. Men are still men. The despot's wickedness Comes of ill teaching, and of power's excess,
Comes of the purple he from childhood wears, Slaves would be tyrants if the chance were theirs.

Victor Hugo

#38. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible. But in the end, they always fail. Think of it: always.

Mahatma Gandhi

#39. History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.

Edward Gibbon

#40. We stand for the maintenance of private property ... We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order.

Adolf Hitler

#41. The liberation of adulthood as we'd conceived it from below was a pipe-dream; with oppressors deposed we became our own tyrants.

Lionel Shriver

#42. WEAKNESSES, n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.

Ambrose Bierce

#43. Conformities are called for much more eagerly today than yesterday ... skeptics, liberals, individuals with a taste for private life and their own inner standards of behavior, are objects of fear and derision and targets of persecution for either side ... in the great ideological wars of our time.

Isaiah Berlin

#44. Secrets, like tyrants, have influence that extends far beyond their own thrones. To silence their oppressive powers, they must be uncrowned.

Ina Catrinescu