Quotes About Tyranny

#1. As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state.

Adam Smith

#2. Catholics get on well with tyranny. It's in the culture.

Richard K. Morgan

#3. I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.

James Joyce

#4. England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequences: the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank.

Mary Wollstonecraft

#5. There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar and anonymous tyranny. It is all-permeating, all-thwarting; it blasts every budding novelty and sprig of genius with its omnipresent and fierce stupidity. Such a headless people has the mind of a worm and the claws of a dragon.

George Santayana

#6. Free people can treat each other justly, but they can't make life fair. To get rid of the unfairness among individuals, you have to exercise power over them. The more fairness you want, the more power you need. Thus, all dreams of fairness become dreams of tyranny in the end.

Andrew Klavan

#7. To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

Samuel Butler

#8. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins. Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

#9. While the Second World War brought about untold misery and suffering, it was also a time when the world witnessed extraordinary bravery. Through the collective, heroic efforts of countless men and women, victory was claimed over tyranny and evil.

Sam Kutesa

#10. [The] discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny ...

Edward Gibbon

#11. Our flag is a proud flag, and it stands for liberty and civilization. Where it has once floated, there must be no return to tyranny.

Theodore Roosevelt

#12. Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity - in short, of tyranny - and it is committed to making tyranny universal.

Adlai E. Stevenson

#13. Although characterized as uncultured and unread, Hitler comes off in his demands to create a monumental signature for a Greater Germany as historically and artistically gifted."
-- Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny, p. 32

Russel H.S. Stolfi

#14. When you attack a tyranny you must expect it to fight back.

Philip K. Dick

#15. All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.

George W. Bush

#16. The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.

George Orwell

#17. [Tyranny is] to compel men not to think as they do, to compel men to express thoughts that are not their own.

Milovan Djilas

#18. Traditionally, Africans hate governments. They hate tyranny.

George Ayittey

#19. It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

Henry Miller

#20. T's [King James Bible] subject is majesty, not tyranny, and it's political purpose was unifying and enfolding, to elide the kingliness of God with the godliness of kings, to make royal power and divine glory into one invisible garment which could be wrapped around the nation as a whole.

Adam Nicolson

#21. Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.

John Hancock

#22. Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny; they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

George Bernard Shaw

#23. Tyranny sets up its own echo-chamber.

Bruce Chatwin

#24. The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor.

Voltaire

#25. Once any tyranny becomes accepted as ordinary, its victory is assured.

David Mitchell

#26. Let them shoot us in the head,
My blood will grow roots
and will blossom.

Visar Zhiti

#27. When people talk to me about tyranny, it makes me laugh and gives me the impression that people suffer from amnesia.

Jean-Claude Duvalier

#28. There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

Robert A. Heinlein

#29. War provides an outlet for every evil element in man's nature. It enfranchises cupidity and greed gives a charter to petty tyranny, glorifies cruelty and places in positions of power the vulgar and base.

C.E.M. Joad

#30. In reality, though, the first thing to ask of history is that it should point
out to us the paths of liberty. The great lesson to draw from revolutions is
not that they devour humanity but rather that tyranny never fails to generate
them.

Pierre Trudeau

#31. Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics ... derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.

Benjamin Franklin

#32. Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line
and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?

Jesse Helms

#33. Man is the highest essence of man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence.

Karl Marx

#34. The salvation of the common people of every race and of every land from war or servitude must be established on solid foundations and must be guarded by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than submit to tyranny.

Winston Churchill

#35. Progress has always been achieved by probing well-entrenched and well-founded forms of life with unpopular and unfounded values. This is how man gradually freed himself from fear and from the tyranny of unexamined systems.

Paul Karl Feyerabend

#36. The only way to make a difference is to acquire power.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

#37. It was like setting up a guillotine in the public square.You don't expect a thousand people to line up to put their heads in it.

Dave Eggers

#38. Secrecy begets tyranny.

Robert A. Heinlein

#39. ABYSS
Our country lives
Among the dead
And dies among the living
Sometimes.

Visar Zhiti

#40. The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home

James Madison

#41. Behind this judicial wall of separation there is a tyranny of lies that will fall ... I say to you, my friends, let it fall!

Fob James

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

A.E. Samaan

#43. I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who's in the military. This is not for law enforcement. This is for us. And, in fact, when you read that Constitution and the Founding Fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny.

Sharron Angle

#44. The face of tyranny Is always mild at first.

Jean Racine

#45. It was a reminder of the old truth that for tyranny to flourish all it required was the complicity of good men.

Claire North

#46. I see no light behind that terrible curtain. I do not think one religion better than another and I think the Christian religion has brought far more misery crime and suffering far more tyranny and evil than any other.

Eliza Lynn Linton

#47. Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice - made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life.

George W. Bush

#48. In 1890, Donnelly published Caesar's Column, a dystopian science fiction novel set in the far-off 1980s, when the United States had become a capitalist tyranny controlled by a ruthless Jewish oligarchy.

Arthur Goldwag

#49. Religion gives us a place to stand outside politics, and without it we're vulnerable to a system in which the state defines everything, which is the essence of tyranny.

R. R. Reno

#50. A tyrant can make anything seem to be 'the will of the people.

Claudia Gray

#51. Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies Government.

B.R. Ambedkar

#52. What will people say-in these words lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the oblique vision of our minds. These four words hold sway everywhere.

Berthold Auerbach

#53. Priesthood, Imamhood, Pundithood often come hand in hand with tyranny.

Abhijit Naskar

#54. The brutal regime of the dictator fell ... the regime that ruled Iraq for decades, the decades of darkness. The decades that were of tyranny.

Jalal Talabani

#55. The universe is all about balance. The forces of light and darkness are meant to keep a check on one another. If one becomes too powerful and starts overrunning the other, that balance will be upset. For the tyranny of virtue is as unbearable as the stranglehold of vice.

Shatrujeet Nath

#56. The original American dream wasn't about wealth, but freedom - freedom to worship and freedom from tyranny. It was also about partnering with God to release the light of His word to all nations, and exporting His glorious gospel to the ends of the earth.

Dutch Sheets

#57. Freedom is sloppy. But since tyranny's the only guaranteed byproduct of those who insist on a perfect world, freedom will have to do.

Bill Willingham

#58. A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

Norman Mailer

#59. The most sacred business of judges is not to ratify the will of the majority but to protect the minority from its tyranny.

Anna Quindlen

#60. The conviction of tragedy that rises out of his [John Dos Passos's] work is the steady protest of a sensitive democratic conscience against the tyranny and the ugliness of society, against the failure of a complete human development under industrial capitalism.

Alfred Kazin

#61. There's a certain amount of tyranny in all of us to some extent, and in some people it's much more developed than in others. It's a different balance which makes us all different.

Paula Fox

#62. Everyone in the world is impacted by the United States' Big Brother attitude toward the world. We need countries to say no to the United States. The United States is the dominant power in the universe, with its eavesdropping abilities, cyber abilities. And the world is in danger with our tyranny.

Oliver Stone

#63. There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

Samuel Johnson

#64. Seek knowledge and teach it to people. Learn dignity and tranquillity, and be humble towards those from whom you learn knowledge and be humble towards those to whom you teach it, and do not be tyrannical scholar otherwise your knowledge cannot be established because of your tyranny.

Umar

#65. The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.

Mikhail Bakunin

#66. I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#67. This country has a mental health problem disguised as a gun problem, and a tyranny problem disguised as a security problem.

Joe Rogan

#68. In war, State power is pushed to its ultimate, and, under the slogans of "defense" and "emergency," it can impose a tyranny upon the public such as might be openly resisted in time of peace.

Murray N. Rothbard

#69. An easily manipulated population that cares mostly for its own amusement may be more ready for tyranny (which can keep the masses happy with "bread and circuses") than for the arduous responsibilities of self-government.

Gene Edward Veith Jr.

#70. Tyranny and anarchy are alike incompatible with freedom, security, and the enjoyment of opportunity.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

#71. The hope and change the Democrats had in mind was nothing more than a retread of the failed and discredited socialist policies that have been the enemy of freedom for centuries all over the world. I fear America is teetering towards tyranny.

Jim DeMint

#72. If our constitution had followed the style of Saint Paul, the First Amendment might have concluded: "But the greatest of these is speech." In the darkness of tyranny, this is the key to the sunlight. If it is granted, all doors open. If it is withheld, none.

Robert Kennedy

#73. A city which belongs to just one man is no true city

Sophocles

#74. When you hear the word 'tyranny of magic' as we heard from Elder Caldell, you will know that it is the calling card of killers. Don't be fooled by their platitudes that is for the common good. Their real power is to strip us of our abilities so that they may easily conquer and rule us.

Terry Goodkind

#75. Apathy is the slow poison coursing through the body politic that paves the way to tyranny.

Laurence Overmire

#76. To all the revolutionaries fighting to throw off the yoke of tyranny around the world: look at British democracy. Is that what you want?

Andy Zaltzman

#77. What kind of person actually sits down and decides that no one should be allowed to end a sentence with a preposition? Not even decide what ideas you should or shouldn't talk about, but to actually make rules about what order to put your words in ... It's such an amazing kind of petty tyranny.

Jonathan Blum Kate Orman

#78. Whenever one tries to suppress doubt , there is tyranny .

Simone Weil

#79. It is difficult for me to talk about some of these things without reliving the extreme emotions and loss one always feels for the untimely deaths of acquaintances, family and friends, all because they stood up against the unlawful tyranny of non-Indian America.

Leonard Peltier

#80. The executive, in our government is not the sole, it is scarcely the principle, object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislature is the most formidable dread at present and will be for many years. That of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period.

Thomas Jefferson

#81. Authority that can not be questioned is tyranny Terry Pratchett: A Slip of the Keyboard

Hank Quense

#82. Tyranny begins with the laws of grammar.

Marty Rubin

#83. It is well known that large numbers of poor people attribute their poverty to what they call the tyranny of capital; meaning thereby the unwillingness of the owners of capital to allow others to use it without security for its safe return and compensation for its use.

Frederic Bastiat

#84. The idea [passing the 17th amendment] benefited from a unique political and cultural atmosphere that consumed a nation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries-a progressive populism promoting simultaneously radical egalitarianism and centralized authoritarianism.

Mark Levin

#85. As long as we prioritize material truths over spiritual truths we will live in tyranny because we are living an illusion

Russell Brand

#86. History has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.

Thomas Jefferson

#87. As a work progresses, its power to elicit and dictate response mounts. There seems to be an optimum moment when this power is at its greatest which just precedes the point where 'elicit' is no longer apt usage. 'Dictates' is the word for this condition and tyranny is the adversary.

Richard Diebenkorn

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

Stendhal

#89. The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

Georg Buchner

#90. Resistance to tyranny ius obedience to God

Susan B. Anthony

#91. If we continue to stand up for our rights, none of us alive today will ever have to pick up a weapon against our government. The bad news is that if those rights are watered down or taken away, the risk of tyranny will increase with each passing generation.

Glenn Beck

#92. Freedom is never easily won, but once established, freedom lasts, spreads and chokes out tyranny.

Trent Lott

#93. For somehow this disease inheres in tyranny, never to trust one's friends.

Aeschylus

#94. It's all very well to put the government in the hands of the perfect man, but what do you do when the perfect man gets a bellyache?

David Eddings

#95. Liberation from the tyranny of the body contributes to greatness, but just as much to greatness in sin as to greatness in virtue.

Bertrand Russell

#96. While we are under the tyranny of Priests, it will ever be their interest, to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith.

Ethan Allen

#97. Cin. Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead! Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets.

William Shakespeare

#98. The point about bad money is not that it converges with the worth of the paper it is printed on. It is worse than that. Falsifying the information basis of all prices, it stultifies entrepreneurs, deceives savers, and fosters tyranny. Interest

George Gilder

#99. There are always a few, Claire, who like being told what to do instead of being required to think. And those are the ones you should fear. That goes equally for humans, I'm afraid. Critical thinking has become a sadly rare skill these days.

Rachel Caine

#100. Today in the early Twenty-First Century, we Americans are once again faced with the same basic choice: liberty or tyranny, freedom or servitude. However, the attitude of far too many Americans towards our problems is one of both ignorance and apathy: "I don't know and I don't care.

Chris Hambleton