Quotes About Tyranny

The ultimate tyranny in a society is not control by martial law. It is control by the psychological manipulation of consciousness, through which reality is defined so that those who exist within it do not even realize that they are in prison. They do not even realize that there is something outside of where they exist.

Insensitive people are powerful and the thoroughly thick-skinned are the most powerful. They make the best tyrants.

the majority of Russians are materially better off than before, the cost in cruelty and tyranny has been no less and probably greater than under the czars. The French Revolution, great prototype of populist government, reverted rapidly to

executions were meant as an exercise in frightfulness according to the theory developed by the Emperor Caligula: "Oderint dum metuant" (Let them hate us as long as they fear us).

servile degree." The object of the noble's function, in theory, was not fighting for fighting's sake, but defense of the two other estates and the maintenance of justice and order. He was supposed to protect the people from oppression, to combat tyranny, and to cultivate virtue—that is, the higher qualities of humanity of which the mud-stained ignorant peasant was considered incapable by his contemporaries in Christianity, if not by its founder.

Deny God, and authority rests on force alone; we relapse into despotism.

Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

Mystery and terror are the bulwarks of tyranny.

En las cuales (si se permitiesen) han de tornarse a hacer, pues de sí mismas (hechas contra aquellas indianas gentes, pacíficas, humildes y mansas que a nadie ofenden) son inicuas, tiránicas, y por toda ley natural, divina y humana condenadas, detestadas

Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs, which are an inalienable right, are regarded as criminal.

Madam, I have come from a country where people are hanged if they talk.

In France, the people were the sport of a king's caprice. Everywhere was the shadow of the Bastille. It fell upon the sunniest field, upon the happiest home.

One of four gates stands open to us: to deny the existence of God, and say we can do without him; to acknowledge his existence, but say he is not good, and act as true men resisting a tyrant; to say, I would there were a God, and be miserable because there is none; or to say there must be a God, and he must be perfect in goodness or he could not be, and give ourselves up to him heart and soul and hands and history.

There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.

When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.

All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.

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.

Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings?

El poder no es un medio, sino un fin en sí mismo. No se establece una dictadura para salvaguardar una revolución; se hace la revolución para establecer una dictadura.

Collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of. ... By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State, Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it.

The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside.

Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings? Only get rid of Man, and the produce of our labour would be our own.