Quotes About Tyranny

unchecked power corrupts.  

subdue the wild beast, which, according to the lively metaphor of Aristotle, [48] seldom fails to ascend the throne of a despot.

The provinces, long oppressed by the ministers of the republic, sighed for the government of a single person, who would be the master, not the accomplice, of those petty tyrants. The people of Rome, viewing, with a secret pleasure, the humiliation of the aristocracy, demanded only bread and public shows; and were supplied with both by the liberal hand of Augustus. The

By 1787, four years since the United States secured its independence, Washington had come to believe that the country faced as grave a threat from internal forces of disunion in the mid-1780s as it had from external ones of tyranny in the mid-1770s, when he accepted leadership of the patriot army at the outset of the Revolutionary War.

Patrick asked him, not for the first time, but with renewed desperation, what it would mean to be free, to live beyond the tyranny of dependency and conditioning and resentment.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants

Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions.

Passing from the tyranny of Charles I to the tyranny of Cromwell is like taking a turn in a revolving door; the exertion merely puts you back where you started. If every jobholder in Washington were driven into the Potomac tonight, their places would be taken tomorrow by others precisely like them.

Every colonial nation carries carries the seeds of a fascist temptation in its bossom. What is fascism if not a regime of oppression for the benefit of a few

So long as men worship dictators, Caesars and Napoleons will arise to make them miserable.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

The thin and precarious crust of decency is all that separates any civilization, however impressive, from the hell of anarchy or systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface.

Un tirano es un lenguaje persistente. Los crímenes y las injusticias parecen razonables cuando se verbalizan

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

Los provocadores, los tiranos, todos los que, de un modo u otro, ofenden al prójimo, son reos, no sólo del mal que cometen, sino también de la perversión que llevan al ánimo de los ofendidos.

It is better to be here ready to protect the peace than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

Inhumanity is the keynote of stupidity in power.

In an absolutism, the autocrat is visible and tangible. The real despotism of republican institutions is far deeper, more insidious, because it rests on the popular delusion of self-government and independence. That is the subtle source of democratic tyranny, and, as such, it cannot be reached with a bullet.

It's not tyranny we desire it's a just, limited, federal government.

If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.

Every man the least conversant in Roman story, knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of Dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to the tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome.

of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

The reasons on which Montesquieu grounds his maxim are a further demonstration of his meaning. "When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body," says he, "there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws to execute them in a tyrannical manner.