Top 100 Tyrant Quotes
#1. Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
Edward Gibbon
#2. Then who is more miserable? One of whom I am about to speak. Who is that? He who is of a tyrannical nature, and instead of leading a private life has been cursed with the further misfortune of being a public tyrant. From
Plato
#3. Where once a tyrant had to wish that his subjects had but one common neck that he might strangle them all at once, all he has to do now is to 'educate the people' so that they will have but one common mind to delude.
Richard Mitchell
#4. Take away Churchill in 1940...Nazism would have prevailed. Hitler would have achieved what no other tyrant, not even Napoleon, had ever achieved: mastery of Europe. Civilization would have descended into a darkness the likes of which it had never known.
Charles Krauthammer
#5. The tyrant should take heed to what he doth,
Since every victim-carrion turns to use,
And drives a chariot, like a god made wroth,
Against each piled injustice.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#7. I will be harsh and stern against the aggressor, but I will be a pillar of strength for the weak.I will not calm down until I will put one cheek of a tyrant on the ground and the other under my feet, and for the poor and weak, I will put my cheek on the ground.
Umar
#8. I'm willing to be regarded as a tyrant to keep my vision intact.
Twyla Tharp
#9. The civil authority, or that part of it which remained faithful to their trust and true to the ends of the covenant, did, in answer to their consciences, turn out a tyrant, in a way which the Christians in aftertimes will mention with honor, and all tyrants in the world look at with fear.
Thomas Carlyle
#10. This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,Was once thought honest.
William Shakespeare
#11. In buskined measures move Pale Grief and pleasing Pain, With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.
Thomas Gray
#12. Do you mean that the tyrant will dare to use violence against the people who fathered him, and raise his hand against them if they oppose him? So the tyrant is a parricide, and little comfort to his old parent.
Plato
#13. The people's silence is a tyrant's greatest advocate. The less captives talked, the less they knew; the less they knew, the more they feared; and the more they feared, the more easily others could manipulate them to their own ends, the more easily the captives could be controlled.
John Kramer
#14. [Magna Carta provided] a system of checks and balances which would accord the monarchy its necessary strength, but would prevent its perversion by a tyrant or a fool.
Winston Churchill
#15. But when one does not complain, and when one wants to master oneself with a tyrant's grip - one's faculties rise in revolt - and one pays for outward calm with an almost unbearable inner struggle.
Charlotte Bronte
#16. What kind of tyrant punishes everyone just to get back at the few he's mad at? I mean, besides Chris Christie.
Bill Maher
#17. The idea had always struck Shader as bizarre: entrusting the governance of a country to the whims of an uneducated mob. No sense in it. No continuity. Not to mention that a canny would-be tyrant could easily hoodwink the masses into electing him. It was one small step from freedom to dictatorship.
D.P. Prior
#18. He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people.
Eugene V. Debs
#19. The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant.
G.K. Chesterton
#20. When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.
Howard Zinn
#21. If Obama's a tyrant, he's a pretty tame tyrant. How many tyrants do you know that really suffer because they can't get cloture?
Jon Stewart
#22. A tyrant needs no real reason for what he does, Quellion said. He was a young man, but not foolish. At times, he sounded like other men Spook had known. Wise men. The difference, then, was one of extremity. Or, perhaps, timing?
Brandon Sanderson
#23. Could it be? Had I actually found another human being who understood that VD was not a day for celebration but a cursed, commercial piece of bullshit lorded over by a tiny cherub-shaped tyrant?
Samantha Young
#24. I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not freedom. Thus it seldom causes any public indignation when an enterprising tyrant claps down on one of his enemies. To most men it seems a natural proceeding.
H.L. Mencken
#25. If we all had names to suit us, you'd be called Thorn in My Backside. Or Plague of the Gods."I prickled at his scathing tone. "And you'd be Miserable Blockhead.""Is that the best you can do?""Give me time. I'm half frozen." "Perhaps your name should be Icy Tyrant. No, wait. Frigid Despot.
Elly Blake
#26. Again, where the people are absolute rulers of the land, they rejoice in having the openness and exuberance of youth, while a tyrant counts this a danger, and seeks to slay or silence those possessed of spirit, while the discreet fear his power and violence.
Euripides
#27. O tyrant love, to what do you not drive the hearts of men.
Virgil
#28. Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrant.
James Madison
#29. If you can only feel safe when everybody else feels, thinks and looks the same as you, then you're a Hood-damned coward ... not to mention a vicious tyrant in the making.
Steven Erikson
#31. There's a big difference between a decisive manager and a tyrant.
Mary Kay Ash
#32. O slavish man! will you not bear with your own brother, who has God for his Father, as being a son from the same stock, and of the same high descent? But if you chance to be placed in some superior station, will you presently set yourself up for a tyrant?
Epictetus
#33. I'll show thee best springs; I'll pluck thee berries;
I'llift fish for thee and get thee wood enough.
A plague upon the tyrant that I serve!
I'll bear him no sticks, but follow thee,
Thou wondrous man.
---Caliban
(Act II, scene 2, lines 158-162)
William Shakespeare
#34. No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution.
Harry Belafonte
#35. Caliban: As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island.
William Shakespeare
#36. Ye that dare oppose, not only tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!
Thomas Paine
#37. And this was history now: heroic protest, concerted rebellion, execution of the tyrant, a new social order. It ran like a clear stream--useless to require it to resemble the viscous substance of truth.
Unsworth
#38. Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people would never adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#39. The object of any tyrant would be to overthrow or diminish trial by jury, for it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives.
Patrick Devlin, Baron Devlin
#40. Curst greed of gold, what crimes thy tyrant power has caused.
Virgil
#41. Tyranny seldom announces itself ... In fact, a tyranny may exist without an individual tyrant. A whole government, even a democratically elected one, may be tyrannical.
Joseph Sobran
#42. The superstitious man is to the rogue what the slave is to the tyrant.
Voltaire
#43. Today I shall be a wicked murderous tyrant and crush something nice under my heel.
Catherynne M Valente
#44. What am I doing with my soul? Interrogate yourself, to find out what inhabits your so-called mind and what kind of soul you have now. A child's soul, an adolescent's, a woman's? A tyrant's soul? The soul of a predator - or its prey?
Marcus Aurelius
#45. The fairy tale belongs to the poor ... I know of no fairy tale which upholds the tyrant, or takes the part of the strong against the weak. A fascist fairy tale is an absurdity.
Erik Christian Haugaard
#46. He hated old women. They frightened him. There was a smell about them that gave him the willies. They were fierce and they had no price. They never gave a damn about making a scene. They got what they wanted. Louie's grandmother had been a tyrant. She had got whatever she wanted by being fierce.
John Steinbeck
#47. Beat me instead," she cried, "It's not Darren's fault! I lost her, I let
her go
I cannot be free, I must be chained inside a house and
robbed of my hawk, you damned tyrant, but I will not have Preciosa
chained too!
Marion Zimmer Bradley
#48. A rebellion against a tyrant is only immoral when it hasn't got a chance.
Muriel Spark
#49. Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
#50. Against the persecution of a tyrant the godly have no remedy but prayer.
John Calvin
#52. There were few worse criminals on any world than the engineer who blithely and knowingly hands over to a tyrant the tools of oppression.
David Brin
#53. That slow poison [slavery] is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our people. Every gentlemen here is born a petty tyrant, practiced in acts of despotism and cruelty.
George Mason
#54. Time is a tyrant, words our last and only weapons.
Lyndsay Faye
#55. You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say 'God is love,' they will claim that you are taking things out of context!
Dan Barker
#56. There aren't any answers to be found. There are no good choices. Submissiveness to a tyrant or chaos and suffering.
Brandon Sanderson
#57. Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
Barbara Tuchman
#58. I mean that man is ruled by a tyrant whose name is Ignorance, and that is the tyrant I sought to overthrow. That is the tyrant which gave birth to monarchy, and monarchy is authority based on falsehood, whereas knowledge is authority based on truth. Man should be ruled by knowledge.
Victor Hugo
#60. It's said that 'power corrupts,' but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.
David Brin
#61. There is nothing more hostile to a city that a tyrant, under whom in the first and chiefest place, there are not laws in common, but one man, keeping the law himself to himself, has the sway, and this is no longer equal.
Euripides
#62. I love something: and scarcely do I love it completely when the tyrant in me says: "I want that in sacrifice." This cruelty is in my entrails. Behold! I am evil.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#63. And what did it matter that Brutus had killed a tyrant? Tyranny still existed in every heart and Rome only existed in Brutus.
Robespierre
#64. In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
Aeschylus
#65. For PEOPLE to rule themselves in a REPUBLIC , they must have virtue;for a TYRANT to rule in a TYRANNY ,he must use FEAR.
William J. Federer
#66. The great universal literature has always had a tragic relation with freedom. The Greeks renounced absolute freedom and imposed order on chaotic mythology, like a tyrant.
Ismail Kadare
#67. Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
Henry David Thoreau
#68. A tyrant has uncommon moral compass.
Toba Beta
#69. I have known many of those pretended champions for liberty in my time, yet do I not remember one that was not in his heart and in his family a tyrant.
Oliver Goldsmith
#70. My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant.
June Jordan
#71. That God should play the tyrant over man is a dismal story of unrelieved oppression; that man should play the tyrant over man is the usual dreary record of human futility; but that man should play the tyrant over God and find him a better man than himself is an astonishing drama indeed.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#72. Better to live under one tyrant a thousand miles away, than a thousand tyrants one mile away.
Daniel Bliss
#73. Hospitality to the exile, and broken bones to the tyrant.
Walter Scott
#74. [It is a basic principle of a tyrant] to unarm his people of weapons, money and all means whereby they resist his power.
Walter Raleigh
#75. Whitehead reacted strongly against the idea of God as a cosmic tyrant, one who brings about everything.
John Polkinghorne
#76. Sometimes I think I should have chosen a line of work where it was just me alone in the room, with the sun coming in, and God, insofar as he or she exists, smiling down upon me. Then I would have never been accused of being a tyrant, other than towards myself.
Charlie Trotter
#77. That to expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It's to ask the impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant
the act of a tyrant.
Marcus Aurelius
#78. The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.
William Hazlitt
#79. Remember that it is not by a tyrant's words, but only by his deeds that we can know him.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#80. Writing a book is an adventure: it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant.
Winston S. Churchill
#81. But courage without conduct is the virtue of a robber, or a tyrant.
Mary Renault
#82. No tyrant could thrive where every subject said no. The tyrant thrives when the first fucking fool salutes.
Steven Erikson
#83. Ch'in Shih-huang is the first emperor of China. He united seven separate kingdoms into a single nation. He built the Great Wall and was buried with the terra-cotta soldiers. The Chinese have mixed feelings about him. They're proud of the nation he created, but he was a maniacal tyrant.
Gene Luen Yang
#84. I would rather be my own tyrant than have someone else tyrannize me.
Henry Flagler
#85. Once the law is broken with impunity, each man regains the right to any means he deems proper or necessary in order to defend himself against the new tyrant, the one who can break the law.
Allan Bloom
#86. I clearly understand, first, that the real human being is a poet and, second, that [the tyrant] is the incarnate negation of a poet.
Vladimir Nabokov
#87. We take a fancy to something: and scarcely have we thoroughly taken a fancy to it when that tyrant in us calls out: "Give me thatin sacrifice"
and we give it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#88. A king ruleth as he ought, a tyrant as he lists, a king to the profit of all, a tyrant only to please a few.
Aristotle.
#90. 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.
#91. But if one wishes to be absolute master of all, to obtain the entire inheritance, and to exclude his brothers from even a third or fifth part, he is not a brother, but a harsh tyrant, a rude savage, nay, more, an insatiable beast that would devour the whole sweet banquet with his own gaping mouth.
Gregory Of Nyssa
#92. The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrant. It is its natural manure.
Thomas Jefferson
#93. The things ... which are proper to the understanding no other man is used to impede, for neither fire, nor iron, nor tyrant, nor abuse, touches it in any way. When it has been made a sphere, it continues a sphere.
Marcus Aurelius
#94. Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.
Elbert Hubbard
#95. Adam Antonovich's father was a tubby tyrant with a triple chin and chinks where his eyes should have been. All his life he had amassed money. In old age he had exchanged it for space; his estates grew, grew and swelled.
("Adam")
Andrei Bely
#96. One of the things the tyrant most cunningly engineers is the gross over-simplification of language, because propaganda requires that the minds of the collective respond primitively to slogans of incitement.
Geoffrey Hill
#97. Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.
Winston S. Churchill
#98. I will have thee, as our rarer monsters are, painted upon a pole,and underwrit: Here you may see the tyrant, Macbeth
William Shakespeare
#99. The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.
Aesop
#100. In 1979, Iranians carried out an illegitimate act: They overthrew a tyrant that the United States had imposed and supported, and moved on an independent path, not following U.S. orders.
Noam Chomsky
