Quotes About Tyranny

When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

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...

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Enlighten the people, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.

History has informed us that bodies of men, as well as individuals, are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.

El árbol de la libertad debe ser vigorizado de vez en cuando con la sangre de patriotas y tiranos: es su fertilizante natural»

The most awful tyranny is that of the proximate Utopia where the last sins are currently being eliminated and where, tomorrow, there will be no more sins because all the sinners will have been wiped out. p. 22

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill.

I sense that striving for wholeness is, increasingly, a countercultural goal, as fragmented people make for better consumers, buying more bits and pieces—two or more cars, two homes and all that fills them—and outfitting one's body for a wide variety of identities: business person, homebody, amateur athlete, traveler, theater or sports fan. Things exercise a certain tyranny over us.

We need to look unblinkered at the truth; the greater honesty we show, the freer we are to face the consequences. The root of the tyranny was Hitler's immeasurable hatred of our Jewish compatriots. Hitler never concealed this hatred from the public but made the entire nation a tool of it.

We have been conditioned to treat rationality as sacred. But life itself is, in a very deep sense, absurd. It will not render itself to the tyranny of reason. Even the most wise cannot help but be flabbergasted by a three-year-old who keeps asking why. If you are not convinced, try asking yourself what is the reason for living. Life is basically a mystery that is not meant to be solved by our intellect. It cannot be "known" through the brain but through the heart.

A dictatorship would be a lot easier ... so long as I'm the dictator.

Sometimes we must fight terror with tyranny.

Tyranny Is far the worst of treasons. Dost thou deem None rebels except subjects? The prince who Neglects or violates his trust is more A brigand than the robber-chief.

Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice-- The weakness and the wickedness of luxury-- The negligence--the apathy--the evils Of sensual sloth--produce ten thousand tyrants, Whose delegated cruelty surpasses The worst acts of one energetic master, However harsh and hard in his own bearing.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

The mass crushes out the insight and reflection that are still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional State should succumb to a fit of weakness.

One could hardly call the things that have happened, and still happen, in the concentration camps of the dictator states an "accidental lack of perfection"—it would sound like mockery.