Quotes About Despots

The tension between isolationism and the global economy creates what George Kennan called "fateful alliances": multinational power blocs. We call them "New Empires" because they take on the qualities of empires. Federated and all-powerful, bureaucratic but decentralized, these superpower-style blocs of countries and corporations grow to dominate the world. They are often benevolent, but they are always despots.

So evil is the brood of the slogans that the most splendid and noble battle cries, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, bred nothing but new and more cunning, more hypocritical despots, better organised murder, popular nationalism drunk with the conceit of hooligans, militarism as the tool of demagogues, hatred not to be assuaged by the blood of millions and a century of tears.

Such men of "towering" egos, in whom ambition is divorced from the people's best interests, were not men to lead a democracy; they were despots.

America's sanctions policy is largely consistent and, in a certain sense, admirable. By applying economic restraints, we label the most oppressive and dangerous governments in the world pariahs. We wash our hands of evil, declining to help despots finance their depredations, even at a cost to ourselves of some economic growth.

Your generous part in my liberation is taken by the world for the revelation of the fact, that the United States are resolved not to allow the despots of the world to trample on oppressed humanity.

History teaches that, when powerful despots can gain something through aggression, they try, by the same methods, to gain more and more and more.

The worst kind of poison for despots: truth.

The orators and the despots have the least power in their cities ... since they do nothing that they wish to do, practically speaking, though they do whatever they think to be best.

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies against despots -- suspicion.

In fact, the cavalier attitude of the self-righteous liar so common to contemporary democratic leaders was thought back then to be the exclusive province of despots and criminals.

The United States was supposed to have a limited government because the founders knew government power attracts demagogues and despots as surely as horse manure attracts horseflies.

SOUL, n. A spiritual entity concerning which there hath been brave disputation. Plato held that those souls which in a previous state of existence (antedating Athens) had obtained the clearest glimpses of eternal truth entered into the bodies of persons who became philosophers. Plato himself was a philosopher. The souls that had least contemplated divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and despots.

Technology adds a new dimension to the process by providing modern despots with instruments far more efficient than any available to their classical counterparts.

In addition to revealing accounts for the Liberian dictator and one-time Merex arms dealer Charles Taylor, the Chilean military ruler Augusto Pinochet and assorted other despots, several Saudi accounts were discovered to contain financial improprieties, including a lack of the required background checks and a consistent failure to alert regulators to large transactions, in violation of federal banking laws.12 Many

Bush II's democracy crusade and Obama's embrace of the Arab Spring have unleashed and empowered forces less receptive to America's wishes and will than the despots and dictators deposed with our approval.

The peoples owe all political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has had to be wrested inch by inch from the despots.

The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruption's of time and party, its members would become despots.

Prison does not silence ideas whose time has come, a fact that generally escapes despots, who by nature are rulers of little wisdom.

There is an unfair responsibility that comes with being an only child - you grow up knowing you aren't allowed to disappoint, you're not even allowed to die. There isn't a replacement toddling around; you're it. It makes you desperate to be flawless, and it also makes you drunk with the power. In such ways are despots made.

Who would imagine that the Deity conducts his providence similar to the detestable despots of this world? Oh horrible? most horrible impeachment of Divine Goodness!

Freedom is contagious. That's why despots fear it so much.

Ironic, I guess. He was a humanitarian, my father. He survived going against the wishes of despots and dictators in some of the most dangerous and war-torn jungles in the world. He finally settled back in the relative safety of the United States and dies in a car crash driving me to a basketball game. It

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots - suspicion.

The Huron and Iroquois forests are peopled by my friends; with me, the despots of Europe and their courts are the savages.