Tyranny By Quotes

#1. In every village there will arise a miscreant to establish the most grinding tyranny by calling himself the people.

Robert Peel

#2. Orwell's '1984' convinced me, rightly or wrongly, that Marxism was only a quantum leap away from tyranny. By contrast, Huxley's 'Brave New World' suggested that the totalitarian systems of the future might be subservient and ingratiating.

J.G. Ballard

#3. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, A History of Nazi Germany, by William L. Shirer, Simon and Schuster, 1960, New York; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock, Harper, 1953, New York;

Philip K. Dick

#4. Dictators can always consolidate their tyranny by an appeal to patriotism.

Aldous Huxley

#5. Recent school shootings have lured ill-informed Americans into a war on our Second Amendment guarantees, led by the nation's tyrants and their useful idiots ... The Second Amendment was given to us as protection against tyranny by the federal government and the Congress of the United States.

Walter E. Williams

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

Henry Miller

#7. All government, all exercise of power, no matter in what form, which is not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny.

Anna Brownell Jameson

#8. A ruler who discerning justice refuseth to it the sanction of law, demanding abnegation of rights and self-sacrifice, will not drive his subjects to these virtues, virtuous only if free, but by unnaturally making justice unlawful, will drive them rather to rebellion against all law.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#9. Tyranny is the wolf cast by the shadows of sheep.

Stefan Molyneux

#10. In order to be heard by the oppressing class, one must speak as a member of it. Not only the language, but the diction. The accusation of tyranny, however well-founded in fact, is dismissed unless it is delivered in the manner that power recognizes as powerful.

James S.A. Corey

#11. Our liberty will not be secured at the sword's point ... We must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it. And when the people reaches that height, God will provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, tyranny will crumble like a house of cards, and liberty will shine out like the first dawn.

Jose Rizal

#12. Any practice of business which would dominate the country by its own selfish interest is a destruction of equality of opportunity. Government in business, except in emergency, is also a destruction of equal opportunity and the incarnation of tyranny through bureaucracy.

Herbert Hoover

#13. At the time I could not see beyond the moral dilemma that is presented to the weak in a world governed by the strong: Break the rules, or perish.

George Orwell

#14. Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large ...

Thomas Jefferson

#15. Let us not be defeated by the tyranny of the world financial markets that threaten peace and democracy everywhere.

Stephane Hessel

#16. Let each one of us pray day and night for the downtrodden millions who are held fast by poverty, priestcraft, and tyranny. Pray day and night for them. I care more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich.

Swami Vivekananda

#17. How is the soul profited by the strife of Hector, the arguments of Plato, the poems of Virgil, or the elegies of Ovid, who, with others like them, are now gnashing their teeth in the prison of the infernal Babylon, under the cruet tyranny of Pluto?

Honorius Augustodunensis

#18. Affections injured by tyranny, or rigor of compulsion, like tempest-threatened trees, unfirmly rooted, never spring to timely growth

John Ford

#19. The act of voting by ordinary Iraqis in the face of extreme danger confirms President Bush's belief that people around the globe, when given a chance, will choose liberty and democracy over enslavement and tyranny.

John Ensign

#20. By seeing it allowed to their officers, they will not be convinced that it is taken from them for their good; and by receiving nothing in its place, they will not believe that it is done in kindness. On the contrary, many of them look upon the change as a new instrument of tyranny.

Richard Henry Dana Jr.

#21. For reforms ameliorate the situation of the working class, they lighten the weight of the chains labour is burdened with by capitalism, but they are not sufficient to crush capitalism and to emancipate the workers from their tyranny.

Clara Zetkin

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

Crystal Eastman

#23. The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power.

Michel De Montaigne

#24. Democracy, which began by liberating man politically, has developed a dangerous tendency to enslave him through the tyranny of majorities and the deadly power of their opinion.

Ludwig Lewisohn

#25. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.

Thomas Jefferson

#26. The framers hated the tyranny of King George, but they were also afraid of the mob. That's why they put so many checks and balances into our system, to guard against the excesses of a government that might be inflamed by public passion or perverted by a dictator's whim.

David Ignatius

#27. The aim is to get as close to nature as possible, shattering the tyranny of cultural values and judgements. In the Vedic approach, self-realization has to be achieved by detached adherence to cultural values and judgements, social roles

Devdutt Pattanaik

#28. We all want peace. Unfortunately, there are times when peace must be defended by fighting terror and tyranny.

James H. Douglas Jr.

#29. To deprive mankind of their natural right and power of creating wealth for themselves, is as great a tyranny as it is to rob them of it after they have created it. And this is done by all laws against honest banking.

Lysander Spooner

#30. Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones, And tottering empires rush by their own weight.

John Armstrong

#31. The world seems to be witnessing a deluge of 'haterisms', and racist propaganda because evil's pain was born to die, and it's time of tyranny is near the end. Don't get caught up by the souls of wickedness; this ain't your fight. ~T.F. Hodge

T.F. Hodge

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

Robert Griffin III

#33. The detention of Japanese Americans during World War II would qualify as an example of majoritarian tyranny and misuse of executive prerogative, driven by fear and racial bias.

Michael Ignatieff

#34. By its nature, government was either small and personal, something on the level of a town hall meeting, or it was tyranny, with the few ruling the many for their own benefit, no matter how representational that government might be in theory.

William H. Keith Jr.

#35. Hell in life indicates a state of suffering, of agony, of torture (by others, by circumstances, or by ourselves), and of insipid colors and little joy. Hell is a heavy vibration that drags us spiraling down from the highest to the lowest, darkest vibrations..

Jacqueline Ripstein

#36. My homeland of Belarus is an unlikely place for an Internet revolution. The country, controlled by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, was once described by Condoleezza Rice as 'the last outpost of tyranny in Europe.'

Evgeny Morozov

#37. If we look at the black record of mass murder, exploitation, and tyranny levied on society by governments over the ages, we need not be loath to abandon the Leviathan State and ... try freedom.

Murray Rothbard

#38. Long time men lay oppress'd with slavish fear Religion's tyranny did domineer ... At length a mighty one of Greece began To assert the natural liberty of man, By senseless terrors and vain fancies let To slavery. Straight the conquered phantoms fled.

Lucretius

#39. Aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice.

Thomas Paine

#40. Everything is mended by the soil.

Andrew Crofts

#41. The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own government.

Walter E. Williams

#42. Tyranny and despotism can be exercised by many, more rigourously, more vigourously, and more severely, than by one.

Andrew Johnson

#43. I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.

Jane Austen

#44. Every tyranny imaginable is possible when prefaced by the notion that it is for the well-being of the populace.

Steven Erikson

#45. All education is despotism. It is perhaps impossible for the young to be conducted without introducing in many cases the tyranny implicit in obedience. Go there; do that; read; write; rise; lie down - will perhaps forever be the language addressed to youth by age.

William Godwin

#46. Tyranny has perhaps oftener grown out of the assumptions of power, called for, on pressing exigencies, by a defective constitution, than out of the full exercise of the largest constitutional authorities.

Alexander Hamilton

#47. Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.

Noah Webster

#48. The willing sacrifice of the innocents is the most powerful retort to insolent tyranny that has yet to be conceived by God or man.

Mahatma Gandhi

#49. Human rights are particularly cherished by the West, which has never acknowledged economic rights. Human rights mean freedom from politcal oppression, tyranny and abuse, while economic oppression, tyranny and abuse are built into the very structures of globalization.

Jeremy Seabrook

#50. I'm just fascinated by the past. You know, both by the possibilities it holds and by the complete tyranny of it, the way it sort of keeps you in this stranglehold and makes you want things that you no longer have and you can never get back.

Samantha Harvey

#51. It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles - the oppression of tyranny - to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

Abraham Lincoln

#52. ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.

Ambrose Bierce

#53. Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

John Stuart Mill

#54. Seventy years ago this November, Vladimir Lenin created the modern totalitarian state, transforming simpler forms of tyranny into history's most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror.

Michael Johns

#55. A tyranny based on ... deception and maintained by terror must inevitably perish from the poison it generates within itself.

Albert Einstein

#56. No totalitarians, no wars, no fears, famines or perils of any kind can really break a man's spirit until he breaks it himself by surrendering. Tyranny has many dread powers, but not the power to rule the spirit.

Edgar S. Brightman

#57. Death is softer by far than tyranny.

Aeschylus

#58. A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.

Ayn Rand

#59. The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.

Donald James

#60. Had not almost every man suffered by the Press, or were not the tyranny thereof become universal, I had not wanted reason for complaint.

Thomas Browne

#61. A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude.

Calvin Coolidge

#62. Death is a softer thing by far than tyranny.

Aeschylus

#63. 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

#64. By his willingly renouncing self-defence, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#65. Trapped and tormented by your own wishes. I knew intimately how that felt; I was often strangled by the tyranny of my desires.

S. Jae-Jones

#66. The miracle of compounding returns is overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs.

John C. Bogle

#67. Both Iraq and Syria are a fissile mixture of ethnicities and religions thrown together after Versailles by departing French and British imperialists and only kept together by Baathist tyranny and violence.

Michael Ignatieff

#68. Let's be clear about one indisputable fact: capitalism vigorously pursued has never produced the atrocities - starvation, tyranny, and genocide - that are produced by statism vigorously pursued. Nothing remotely close.

Donald J. Boudreaux

#69. Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.

William Godwin

#70. 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

#71. For this was the other thing that Elric knew: that to compromise with Tyranny is always to be destroyed by it. The sanest and most logical choice lay always in resistance.

Michael Moorcock

#72. 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

#73. 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

#74. 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

#75. 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

#76. 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

#77. 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

#78. Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. You can join the Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep ...

Ernest Gellner

#79. The seeds of freedom ... have now been scattered where despotism and tyranny ranked and ruled, will be watered by the enlivening dews of God's clemency, till the reapers abolitionists shall shout the harvest home.

Henry McNeal Turner

#80. The danger from legislative usurpations, which, by assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpations.

James Madison

#81. The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also; only of a less intense kind.

Herbert Spencer

#82. Outrageous ... that wilfully selfish tyranny of silence evolved by a crafty old ostrich of a world for its own well-being and comfort.

Radclyffe Hall

#83. 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.

Evan Meekins

#84. To fight tyranny and oppression by using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat a single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningful democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence.

Tariq Ali

#85. A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.

Peter Thiel

#86. When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.

Thomas Jefferson

#87. If you are often deceived by those around you, you may be sure that you deserve to be deceived; and that instead of railing at the general falseness of mankind, you have first to pronounce judgment on your own jealous tyranny, or on your own weak credulity.

Arthur Helps

#88. This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.

George Orwell

#89. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.

Jeremy Bentham

#90. In Russia, whatever be the appearance of things, violence and arbitrary rule is at the bottom of them all. Tyranny rendered calm by the influence of terror is the only kind of happiness which this government is able to afford its people.

Marquis De Custine

#91. The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature.

Henry David Thoreau

#92. The debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.

Noam Chomsky

#93. The left hand holds the power of weakness; the right, the power of strength. I wish my actions to be ruled by the power of weakness, so I hold my staff in my left hand. You hold your scepters in the right hand; your actions are ruled by the power of strength. Of might. Of tyranny.

Lena Karynn Tesla

#94. He was ruled by the tyranny of instinct, by passion and the instant legislation of a simple heart.

Pat Conroy

#95. Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.

Emile M. Cioran

#96. No method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be divorced from local self-government. No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction, and decline.

Calvin Coolidge

#97. It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions; on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor.

Edmund Burke

#98. The framers were realists; they recognized that the best constitution in the world could be distorted and destroyed by men determined to do so.

John Eidsmoe

#99. Let this circumstance of our constitution therefore be directed to this noble purpose, and then all the objections urged against it by jealous tyranny and affrighted superstition will vanish.

Adam Weishaupt

#100. Every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny.

William Blackstone