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Quotes About Tyranny

For a Monarchy readily becomes a Tyranny, an Aristocracy an Oligarchy, while a Democracy tends to degenerate into Anarchy.
~ Niccolo Machiavelli
for monarchy easily becomes tyranny, aristocracy easily becomes oligarchy, and democracy easily converts to anarchy. Thus anyone organizing a government according to one of the good forms does so for but a short time, because no precaution will prevent it from slipping into its opposite, so closely are the virtues and vices of the two related.
~ Niccolo Machiavelli
hailed the Florentine as the first modern thinker to have exposed the nature of political tyranny.
~ Niccolo Machiavelli
Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.
~ Harold H. Greene
tyranny cannot stand forever. It is an ugly beast that must feed. Eventually, the Empire will devour everything it has, and will turn on its own.
~ Christie Golden
men call it the tyranny of tears, it is an iron tyranny- no man could be so cruel, so devishlish,as a woman with her weakness, recrimination, convenient ailments, nerves and tears. We men are all weak as water before the primitive devices of Eve. I was patient at first, many years. '
~ Christina Stead
However, it was best known to the delegates as stated by the French thinker Montesquieu. He pointed out that When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or the same body of magistry, there can be no liberty; because apprehension may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
~ Christopher Collier
The Postmodernists' tyranny wears people down by boredom and semi-literate prose.
~ Christopher Hitchens
In order to be a part of the totalitarian mind-set, it is not necessary to wear a uniform or carry a club or a whip. It is only necessary to wish for your own subjection, and to delight in the subjection of others.
~ Christopher Hitchens
The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.
~ Christopher Hitchens
The conventional word that is employed to describe tyranny is "systematic." The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not. (The only rule of thumb was: whatever is not compulsory is forbidden.) Thus, the ruled can always be found to be in the wrong.
~ Christopher Hitchens
Distrust any speaker who speaks confidently about "we," or speaks in the name of "us." Distrust yourself if you hear these tones creeping into your own style. The search for security and majority are not always the same as solidarity; it can be another name for consensus and tyranny and tribalism. Never forget that, even if there are "masses" to be invoked, or "the people" to be praised, they and it must by definition be composed of individuals.
~ Christopher Hitchens
So there are laws that are defensible but unenforceable, and there are laws impossible to infringe. But in the New York of Mayor Bloomberg, there are laws that are not possible to obey, and that nobody can respect, and that are enforced by arbitrary power. The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law. Tyranny can be petty. And "petty" is not just Bloomberg's middle name. It is his name.
~ Christopher Hitchens
the tree of liberty must be nurtured by the blood of tyrants, as well as of patriots).
~ Christopher Hitchens
If I be cruel and grow tyrannous, Now let them thank themselves, and rue too late.
~ Christopher Marlowe
No,' he said. 'There is no pirating. We fly the Stars and Stripes. We call it, Old Glory. We are Americans, and we are waging war as best we can, against tyranny. But I'll keep safe. Oh, I'll keep safe. Until I can come home back for you, and take you to paradise.' *
~ Christopher Nicole
But ask yourself this Eragon: If gods exist, have they been good custodians of alagaesia? Death, sickness, poverty, tyranny and countless other miseries stalk the land. If this is the handiwork of divine beings, then they are to be rebelled against and overthrown, not given obeisance, obedience, and reverance.
~ Christopher Paolini
Tyranny, you understand, has been achieved thanks to universal suffrage! The scoundrel has carried out an authoritarian coup d'état by appealing to the ignorant mob! This is a warning to us about the democracy of tomorrow.
~ Umberto Eco
me había topado con la afirmación de Carpócrates según la cual, para liberarnos de la tiranía de los ángeles, señores del cosmos, es necesario perpetrar toda clase de ignominias, saldando todas las deudas que hemos contraído con el universo y con nuestro cuerpo, porque sólo cometiendo todos los actos el alma puede liberarse de sus pasiones y reencontrar la pureza originaria.
~ Umberto Eco
Tyranny, you understand, has been achieved thanks to universal suffrage! The scoundrel has carried out an authoritarian coup d'état by appealing to the ignorant mob! This is a warning to us about the democracy of tomorrow." "Quite right," thought Simonini. "This Napoleon is a man for our times. He understands how to keep a grip on people who only seventy years ago were getting excited about the idea of cutting off a king's head.
~ Umberto Eco
Ez ám a siker: általános választások útján hozni létre zsarnoki rendszert! Úgy hajtott végre önkényuralmi puccsot a nyomorult, hogy közben a birka népre hivatkozhatott! Láthatjuk, milyen jövÅ' vár a demokráciára.
~ Umberto Eco
Suddenly the events of the time took shape in his imagination as a duel of wills between these two: one the champion of democracy, of government by popular consent, of the rights of the individual to think his own thoughts, to speak his own mind, to live his own life so long as he did not interfere with the equal rights of his fellows; the other the champion of those ancient dark forces of tyranny and oppression which had ruled the world before the concept of freedom had been born.
~ Upton Sinclair
When will they stop following leaders who build their monuments out of millions of human skulls?" The son of Budd-Erling was perhaps the least happy man in that famous old church at the moment. He had little admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte, and still less for his Austrian imitator.
~ Upton Sinclair
If Fascism should ever be fully assured of it's final triumph, the world will choke in blood.
~ Vasily Grossman