Quotes About Despotisms

For we are not wrestling with flesh and blood [contending only with physical opponents], but against the despotisms, against the powers, against [the master spirits who are] the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spirit forces of wickedness in the heavenly (supernatural) sphere. —EPHESIANS 6:12

Topographic conditions were the foundation of Greek democracy, just as those of a different kind gave rise to the Oriental despotisms of Egypt and elsewhere.

When we speak of authority at present we usually have in mind governmental authority. Actually, social order is most firm when imposed and maintained by the limited authorities of family, school, church, job, neighborhood and so on. In 1848 the Spaniard Donoso-Cortés predicted that "when religious discipline ceases to exist there cannot be enough of government; all despotisms will not be sufficient." This holds true to some extent of the other minor authorities.

The gods, I correct her. Monotheism sucks, like all despotisms. The species is naturally, democratically, polytheistic, apart from that evolutionary elite which has dispensed with the divine requirement entirely. You instinctively want the gods to be many because you are One.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

What is it Aristotle said? 'Republics decline into democracies, and democracies degenerate into despotisms.' Yes. Populism is becoming popular in America—an old doctrine, though its adherents invariably think it is a new one, age after age.

What is it that Aristotle said: 'Republics decline into democracies, and democracies degenerate into despotisms.' We have approached that day.

They started out calling liberal institutions democratic, and they ended up calling democratic despotisms liberal.

The availability of irrigation systems to water the land and produce grain and other food crops was the material foundation for these two great river-valley societies, Egypt and Iraq. They were hydraulic despotisms, in which a small ruling class, with the aid of soldiers and priests, commanded the material resources that gave sustenance to these civilizations and allowed them to build cities, palaces, and tombs.