Quotes About Tyranny

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. — C.S.LEWIS

Progress has always been achieved by probing well-entrenched and well-founded forms of life with unpopular and unfounded values. This is how man gradually freed himself from fear and from the tyranny of unexamined systems.

The murderous, self-elected, megalomaniacal head of state with the morals of a fruit fly, with his decades in power, along with his vain, flitting shopaholic wife, his hangers-on, and his goon squad, is an obscene feature of African life that is not likely to disappear.

The sight of bribery on the back road of any country is a clear indication that the whole place is corrupt and the regime a thieving tyranny, as Angola has been for the thirty-five years of its independence—and likely much longer, since Portuguese colonial rule was also an extortion racket.

The murderous, self-elected, megalomaniacal head of state with the morals of a fruit fly is an obscene feature of African life that is not likely to disappear.

The sight of bribery on the back road of any country is a clear indication that the whole place is corrupt and the regime a thieving tyranny

He understood that, contrary to what most people think, total power means total slavery.

Slavery discourages arts and manufacturing ...[and] every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.

What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity.

Only tyrannies understand the power of art.

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

And its object is Art not power, sub-creation not domination and tyrannous re-forming of Creation.

absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There should be no presumption that any critical juncture will lead to a successful political revolution or to change for the better. History is full of examples of revolutions and radical movements replacing one tyranny with another, in a pattern that the German sociologist Robert Michels dubbed the iron law of oligarchy, a particularly pernicious form of the vicious circle.

But a dictator doesn't need supporters, he just needs followers

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Thus

there were few worse criminals on any world than the engineer who blithely and knowingly hands over to a tyrant the tools of oppression.

For the first time there appeared on earth kings, dictators, high priests, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, governors, mayors, generals, admirals, police chiefs, judges, lawyers, and jailers, along with dungeons, jails, penitentiaries, and concentration camps. Under the tutelage of the state, human beings learned for the first time how to bow, grovel, kneel, and kowtow. In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery.

Irony tyrannizes us. All US irony is based on an implicit 'I don't really mean what I'm saying.

What tortures have men to endure, comparable to those daily repeated shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are riddled by the tyrants of their sex?

It is excellent To have a giant's strength But it is tyrannous To use it like a giant

O, it is excellent To have a giant's strenght, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.

Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.