Quotes About Tyranny

Whoever you may be, if your name is Prejudice, Abuse, Ignorance, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice, Fanaticism, Tyranny, beware of the gaping gamin. The little fellow will grow up.

They wanted an end to oppression, an end to tyranny, an end to the sword, work for men, instruction for the child, social sweetness for the woman, liberty, equality, fraternity, bread for all, the idea for all, the Edenizing of the world. Progress; and that holy, sweet, and good thing, progress, they claimed in terrible wise, driven to extremities as they were, half naked, club in fist, a roar in their mouths. They were savages, yes; but the savages of civilization.

Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

You don't reason with men like Hitler.

Since the turn of the century, American fundamentalists had reveled in their sense of persecution by an infidel elite, but in the 1960s the atheist tyranny became official. In 1962 and 1963 the Supreme Court decided in two cases, with only one dissenter in each instance, that it was unconstitutional for public schools to conduct organized prayer or Bible readings, and in 1968 the court finally ruled—unanimously—that states could not ban the teaching of evolution.

If omnipotent sadists had set out to take an extremely good, well-functioning piece of our political economy and social structure and make it undemocratic and oppressive, this is what their scheme would've looked like.

Tyranny has no need of arts or sciences, for its policy, which is very shallow and without any refinement, only consists in shedding blood.

It is really quite extraordinary that some people should speak to us of tyranny in the present Party: tyranny of bosses, tyranny of elected parliamentary deputies. I don't know what means the deputies employ today to exercise their tyranny, but at least you know who they are, and you can take their means away from them. From where will you take them tomorrow? From anonymities, from unknown persons, from masks.

Astounding how similar the face of freedom can be to the face of fascism.

Other offences, even the greatest, are the violation of one law: despotism is the violation of all.

As modern tyrannies are swept away (and every honest heart delights), the quick-thinking servants of the world's great powers still proffer plans to intervene, to jostle, scheme and sponsor factions that they barely understand.

I won't be one of the hundreds telling you that being alive flows like a story you write consciously, deliberately, full of linear narrative, foreshadowing, repetition, motifs. The emotional beats come down where they should, last as long as they should, end where they should, and that should come from somewhere real and natural, not from the tyranny of the theatre, the utter hegemony of fiction.

And in my dream, if the fathers and mothers loved their sons and daughters and sang to them in their cradles, they made a good country, and if they didn't, they made a tyranny, so whether existence is a bloodbath or a bubble bath could hinge on whether a little child got kissed good night with a story and a glass of water or sent to bed without snuggles or a snack or a cohesive philosophy of justice.

If you refuse me, I shall be compelled to believe that you are cruelly enjoying my misery, and that you have learned in the most accursed school that the best way of preventing a young man from curing himself of an amorous passion is to excite it constantly; but you must agree with me that, to put such tyranny in practice, it is necessary to hate the person it is practised upon, and, if that be so, I ought to call upon my reason to give me the strength necessary to hate you likewise.

Against a heart inflamed with love, burning with unquenchable fire, a ruthless tyrant, cruelly armed, wages war, but all in vain. From every attack a victor, Love will always triumph. - Rosina

For those of Hamiltonian inclination, liberty tended to be positively defined, freedom to—the right to pursue personal entrepreneurship, and expect government support. Jefferson, who had after all drafted the Declaration of Independence, tended to emphasize a negatively defined freedom from—the right not to be interfered with, not to be tyrannized. These differences of opinion have divided American politics right down to the present day.

In my view, the right to bear arms is in the Constitution for three main reasons: self-protection, community protection, and protection from tyrrany.

If we continue to stand up for our rights, none of us alive today will ever have to pick up a weapon against our government. The bad news is that if those rights are watered down or taken away, the risk of tyranny will increase with each passing generation.

If you're forcing and mandating people to act in a certain way, then it's not really "benevolence" or "charity"; it's effectively nothing more than tyranny, and tyranny never produces a well-functioning, happy society.

173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one," wrote Jefferson in 1785 in his Notes on the State of Virginia. "An elective despotism was not the government we fought for."31

The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity.

A man does not come to the alms-house or the jail by the tyranny of fate or circumstance, but by the pathway of grovelling thoughts and base desires. Nor does a pure-minded man fall suddenly into crime by stress of any mere external force; the criminal thought had long been secretly fostered in the heart, and the hour of opportunity revealed its gathered power.

A guy does not come to the almshouse or the jail by using the tyranny of fate or situation, but with the aid of the pathway of grovelling mind and base goals.

No evil can happen to the righteous man who has cut off the source of evil in himself; living in the All-Good, and abstaining from sin in thought, word and deed, whatever happens to him is good; neither can any person, event, or circumstance cause him suffering, for the tyranny of circumstance is utterly destroyed for him who has broken the bonds of sin.