Quotes About Usurpation

No man can justly impose anything upon those who owe him nothing. . . . Whosoever therefore . . . grounds his pretensions of right upon usurpation and tyranny, declares himself to be, like Nimrod, a usurper and a tyrant, that is an enemy to God and man, and to have no right at all.

A man sometimes starts up a patriot, only by disseminating discontent, and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of violated rights, and encroaching usurpation. This practice is no certain note of patriotism. To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend public happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace.

It is not to avoid cold or hunger that tyrants cover themselves with blood; and states decree the most illustrious rewards, not to him who catches a thief, but to him who kills an usurper.

But humans want to usurp the place of God, making themselves the center of the Story.

Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil, but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power. Twenty-first century market capitalism, American-style, will fail for the same reasons. Both are edifices constructed by human intelligence, undone by human nature.

Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors.

Your dispatch is received, and if genuine, which its extraordinary character leads me to doubt, I have to say in reply that I regard the levy of troops made by the administration for the purpose of subjugating the states of the South, as in violation of the Constitution, and as a gross usurpation of power. I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina.

Forms of power flow and translate into each other, or, to put it in a less reified matter, possessors of power move to expand and guard it, among other things by gaining hold and tightening their grip on the various levers of power. No effective state power can maintain control, defend its realm against outsiders, or safeguard against usurpation without a substantial underpinning of force.

Once a properly functional hierarchy has been established, an opportunity opens for its positions of authority to be usurped, not by people who have the competence demanded by the task at hand, but by those willing to use manipulation, deceit, and compulsion to gain status and control.

Protestants, on the contrary, rejected the Church as a vehicle of revelation; truth was to be sought only in the Bible, which each man could interpret for himself. If men differed in their interpretation, there was no divinely appointed authority to decide the dispute. In practice, the State claimed the right that had formerly belonged to the Church, but this was a usurpation. In Protestant theory, there should be no earthly intermediary between the soul and God.

The truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks government at will.

This dog is mine, said those poor children; that is my place in the sun. Here is the beginning and the image of the usurpation of all the earth.

Unlike other peoples, the Americans were armed, and the resistance of the state governments would bar a federal tyranny. By contrast, the European monarchies were "afraid to trust the people with arms." In short, the keeping and bearing of arms by the citizens would preserve the republic and protect liberty. The authors of The Federalist Papers contended that an armed populace and state resistance, not paper guarantees, would prevent federal usurpation based on military force.

En el mismo comienzo del Génesis está escrito que Dios creó al hombre para confiarle el dominio sobre los pájaros, los peces y los animales. Claro que el Génesis fue escrito por un hombre y no por un caballo. No hay seguridad alguna de que Dios haya confiado efectivamente al hombre el dominio de otros seres. Más bien parece que el hombre inventó a Dios para convertir en sagrado el dominio sobre la vaca y el caballo, que había usurpado.

Non esiste alcuna certezza che Dio abbia affidato davvero all'uomo il dominio sulle altre creature. E' invece più probabile che l'uomo si sia inventato Dio per santificare il dominio che egli ha usurpato sulla mucca o sul cavallo

The institution of the state "bound new fetters on the poor, and gave new powers to the rich … fixed forever the laws of property and inequality; converted clever usurpation into inalienable right; and for the sake of a few ambitious men, subjected all mankind to perpetual labour, servitude and misery." These are not Marx's words, but (as we have seen already) those of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Discourse on Inequality.

Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.

As you sit there and as I sit here, they are going in. They're taking over, and they just walk in and they can do whatever they want. They have essentially already taken it over.

When politicians don black robes and seize powers they do not have, they should be called out for what they are - usurpers and petty tyrants.

Man's usurpation over nature is an egotism that will destroy human as well as whale kingdoms. … Academies should return to wisdom study in tree groves rather than robot study in plastic cells

There is a germ of religion in human nature so strong that whenever an order of men can persuade the people by flattery or terror that they have salvation at their disposal, there can be no end to fraud, violence, or usurpation.

In democratic states, the only governments founded on justice, it sometimes happens that a faction usurps power; then the whole rises up, and the necessary vindication of its right may go so far as armed conflict.

One conqueror replaces another

A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.