Tyrants Quotes:

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

topic: Nature, Men, Tyrants

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

source: 1937 The Olive Tree.

topic: Thinking, Compassion, Tyrants, Propagandist

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

topic: Country, War, Tyrants, Modern War

Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.

topic: Powerful, Army, Tyrants, Public Education, Servitude

- Alexander Hamilton

topic: Men, Careers, Tyrants

...great Ambition, unchecked by principle, or the love of Glory, is an unruly Tyrant...

- Alexander Hamilton

topic: Ambition, Tyrants, Principles, Great Ambition, Unruly

In adamantine chains shall Death be bound, And Hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal wound.

- Alexander Pope

topic: Future, Tyrants, Hell, Grim

Still when the lust of tyrant power succeeds, some Athens perishes, or some Tully bleeds.

- Alexander Pope

topic: Tyrants, Lust, Athens

In this, our age of infamy Man's choice is but to be A tyrant, traitor, prisoner: No other choice has he.

- Alexander Pushkin

topic: Men, Tyrants, Choices, Infamy

Michael Moore: a man who never without an excuse for keeping murdering tyrants in power. But now he's supporting the man who bombed Milosevic into submission? How about an explanation, Mr Moore?

- Andrew Sullivan

topic: Men, Tyrants, Politics

Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis. He snatched the lightning from the sky and the sceptre from tyrants.

- Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune

topic: Sky, Tyrants, Lightning

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

It is also in the interests of the tyrant to make his subjects poor... the people are so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for plotting.

topic: Philosophical, Tyrants, People, Oligarchy, Right To Bear Arms

A king ruleth as he ought, a tyrant as he lists, a king to the profit of all, a tyrant only to please a few.

topic: Tyrants, People, Tasks, Daily Tasks

No tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other.

topic: Kings, Tyrants, Lists

All three states - the Lacedaemonian, the Cretan, and the Carthaginian - nearly resemble one another, and are very different from any others. Many of the Carthaginian institutions are excellent. The superiority of their constitution is proved by the fact that the common people remains loyal to the constitution; the Carthaginians have never had any rebellion worth speaking of, and have never been under the rule of a tyrant.

topic: Men, Tyrants, Needs

Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

topic: Tyrants, People, Different

- Baron de Montesquieu

topic: Tyrants, Luxury, Republic

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

- Baron de Montesquieu

topic: Law, Names, Tyrants, Perpetuating

The president, who finds so much to complain about in other areas of the world, apparently saw nothing wrong in recognizing a Communist regime that has killed more people in its short history of control over the teeming millions of that great country than any other collection of dictators or tyrants in the history of the world.

- Barry Goldwater

topic: Country, War, Tyrants

Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.

- Baruch Spinoza

topic: War, Tyrants, Evil

Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame a flatterer.

- Ben Jonson

topic: Tyrants, Flattery, Beast, Flatterer, Wild Beasts

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

- Benito Mussolini

topic: Power, Tyrants, Mergers

The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants, but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.

- Benjamin Disraeli

topic: Kings, Government, Tyrants, Divine Right, Divine Right Of Kings

Man will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants.

- Benjamin Franklin

topic: War, Men, Tyrants

Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.

- Benjamin Franklin

topic: Tyrants, Conservative, Rebellion, Obedience To God, Rebellion Against God

Why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away?

- Benjamin Martin

topic: Tyrants, Three, Should

The method of rule of the tyrant and the oligarch is quite simply to clobber, coerce, or overawe all or most other groups in the interest of their own.

- Bernard Crick

source: Bernard Crick (1962). “In Defence of Politics”

topic: Tyrants, Groups, Method

The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.

- Bertrand Barere

source: Speech in the Convention Nationale (16 January 1793), Archives Parliamentaires de 1787 à 1860, vol. 57, p. 368, 1900.

topic: Blood, Tyrants, Tree

L'arbre de la libertÃ© croÃ®t lorsqu'il est arrosÃ© du sang de toute espÃ¨ce de tyrans (The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants),

- Bertrand Barere

topic: Blood, Tyrants, Tree

In former days, men sold themselves to the Devil to acquire magical powers. Nowadays they acquire those powers from science, and find themselves compelled to become devils. There is no hope for the world unless power can be tamed, and brought into the service, not of this or that group of fanatical tyrants, but of the whole human race, white and yellow and black, fascist and communist and democrat; for science has made it inevitable that all must live or all must die.

- Bertrand Russell

topic: Men, Tyrants, Yellow

Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of.

- Bill Moyers

topic: Dream, Freedom, Tyrants

Ignorance has always been the weapon of tyrants; enlightenment the salvation of the free.

- Bill Richardson

source: "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

topic: Ignorance, Tyrants, Enlightenment, Enlightenment And Love

Custom governs the world; it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners and rules the world with the hand of a despot.

- Bill Vaughan

topic: Hands, Tyrants, Feelings, Despots

Let's face it. Umpiring is not an easy or happy way to make a living. In the abuse they suffer, and the pay they get for it, you see an imbalance that can only be explained by their need to stay close to a game they can't resist.

- Bob Uecker

topic: Games, Tyrants, Abuse

Wretched men cringe before tyrants who have no power, the victims of their trivial hopes and fears. They do not realise that anger is hopeless, fear is pointless and desire all a delusion. He whose heart is fickle is not his own master, has thrown away his shield, deserted his post, and he forges the links of the chain that holds him.

- Boethius

topic: Heart, Men, Tyrants, Cringe

But you can't kill me, Lord Tyrant. I represent that one thing you've never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope.

- Brandon Sanderson

topic: Tyrants, Trying, Matter, Kelsier

I killed you once", the Lord Ruler said, turning back to Kelsier. "You tried", Kelsier replied, his voice loud and firm, carrying across the square. "But you can't kill me, Lord Tyrant. I represent that thing you've never been able to kill no matter how hard you try. I am hope.

- Brandon Sanderson

topic: Squares, Tyrants, Voice, Kelsier

A dagger is the noble weapon of Brutus. Everyone understands that tyrants fall to daggers. A bomb is a sordid modern device with many complex working parts. Only engineers understand bombs

- Bruce Sterling

topic: Fall, Tyrants, Noble, Brutus

Death is the tyrant of the imagination.

- Bryan Procter

topic: Death, Tyrants, Imagination, Cornwall

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

- C. S. Lewis

topic: Tyrants, Different, Saint

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

- C. S. Lewis

topic: Peace, War, Tyrants, Busybodies, Limited Freedom

Lacan is a tyrant who must be driven from our shores. Narrowly trained English professors who know nothing of art history or popular culture think they can just wade in with Lacan and trash everything in sight.

- Camille Paglia

topic: Art, Thinking, Tyrants, Lacan, Popular Culture

We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.

- Carl Levin

topic: Mean, Tyrants, Iraq, Gulf War, Iraq War

No government which governs by the use of force can survive except by force. There is no going back because force begets force and the perpetrators of crimes live in fear that they might become victims in their turn.

- Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo

source: Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo (2001). “The Road to Freedom: A Collection of Speeches, Pastoral Letters, and Articles from 1997-2001”

topic: Tyrants, Government, Might, Perpetrators, Use Of Force

What I like about a dog it stops people getting after you, they're not going to come round in the night. But they make the place stink because I might want to stay out a few days and when I get back I might want to stay in a few days and a dog can become a tyrant to you.

- Caryl Churchill

source: Caryl Churchill (2008). “Plays Four”, Nick Hern Books

topic: Dog, Night, Tyrants

I would not be beholden to a tyrant, for his acts of tyranny. For it is but usurpation in him to save, as their rightful lord, the lives of men over whom he has no title to reign.

- Cato the Younger

topic: Men, Tyrants, Liberty, Usurpation

My task is not to tyrannize but to destroy tyrants.

- Cesare Borgia

topic: Tyrants, Tasks

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.

- Charles Caleb Colton

topic: Freedom, Tyrants, Mind

People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well

- Charles Colson

topic: Self, Tyrants, Government

I had gradually come, by this time [1839-01], to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc. and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian.

- Charles Darwin

topic: Book, Tyrants, Rainbow, Tower Of Babel, Revengeful

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobedience of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men

- Charlton Heston

topic: Men, Hands, Tyrants

If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.

- Che Guevara

topic: Tyrants, History, Justice, Indignation, Comrade

The educated ones leave, the ones with the potential to right the wrongs. They leave the weak behind. The tyrants continue to reign because the weak cannot resist. Do you not see that it is a cycle? Who will break that cycle?

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

topic: Tyrants, Reign, Weak

Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.

- Clarence Darrow

topic: Tyrants, Subjects

A good deal of tyranny goes by the name of protection.

- Crystal Eastman

source: Crystal Eastman (1978). “Crystal Eastman on Women and Revolution”, Oxford University Press, USA

topic: Names, Tyrants, Protection

You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say "God is love" they will claim that you are taking things out of context!

- Dan Barker

source: Dan Barker (1992). “Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist”, Freedom from Religion Fndtn

topic: Biblical, Tyrants, Two

Each man has an equal social right to multiply his power of motion by all the social factors of civilization. Private property in any of these factors is inconsistent with this fundamental right; it must, obviously, prove a source of economic despotism and industrial slavery.

- Daniel De Leon

topic: Men, Civilization, Tyrants, Inconsistent

Nature has left this tincture in the blood, That all men would be tyrants if they could.

- Daniel Defoe

topic: Men, Blood, Tyrants, Women's Suffrage, Women Equality

All men would be tyrants if they could.

- Daniel Defoe

topic: Men, Tyrants, Would Be

The monster has escaped Elba!" "The tyrant has landed at Cannes!" "Bonaparte meets the troops." "Napoleon approaches Paris." "His Imperial Majesty has entered the capital.

- David Frum

topic: Tyrants, Paris, History, Cannes, Elba

I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe.

- Deborah Sampson

topic: Sex, Tyrants, Band

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.

- Demosthenes

topic: Trust, Wise, Tyrants, Despots, Eternal Vigilance

Excessive dealings with tyrants are not good for the security of free states.

- Demosthenes

topic: Tyrants, States, Dealings, Free State

China is not a superpower, nor will she ever seek to be one... If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialist, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it.

- Deng Xiaoping

topic: Bullying, Play, Tyrants, Opposing, Exposing

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

- Denis Diderot

source: "Essai sur le Mérite de la Vertu". A translation and adaptation of "Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit" by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, 1745.

topic: Peace, War, Tyrants, Fanaticism

My dad was a tyrant. He used to physically beat the crap out of us.

- Dennis Wilson

topic: Dad, Tyrants, Used

The universal methodology of the tyrant is always incrementalism.

- Derek R. Audette

topic: Tyrants, Politics, Methodology, Incrementalism

It would seem to me that If this physical life, of which we are now aware, does indeed comprise the entirety of human experience, then what we seem to intuitively know to be true is entirely backwards. For if this is the case, then it must be the despicable tyrant, free of any moral values, and not the selfless compassionate who sacrifices himself for the good of mankind that is truly the one most deserving of our reverence and emulation.

- Derek R. Audette

topic: Life, Sacrifice, Tyrants, Moral Values

The mob is the mother of tyrants.

- Diogenes

topic: Mother, Motherhood, Tyrants

A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants.

- Doris Lessing

topic: Tyrants, Library, World

Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.

- Dorothy Day

source: "Women on War : Essential Voices for the Nuclear Age" by Daniela Gioseffi, (p. 103), 1988.

topic: Acceptance, Tyrants, Rotten

It was known in the mid 90s already that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous tyrant that he had already launched aggressions against Iran, he had invaded Kuwait.

- Douglas J. Feith

topic: Iran, Kuwait, Tyrants

But we know that freedom cannot be served by the devices of the tyrant. As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence. And any who act as if freedoms defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

topic: Freedom, Tyrants, America

Martyrs have been sincere. And so have tyrants. Wise men have been sincere. And so have fools.

- E. Haldeman-Julius

topic: Wise, Men, Tyrants

Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake.

- Edgar Wallace

topic: Fear, Snakes, Tyrants

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

- Edmund Burke

topic: Tyrants, Tyranny, Multitudes

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

- Edmund Burke

topic: Heart, Tyrants, Mind

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

- Edmund Burke

topic: Kings, Tyrants, Principles

History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.

- Edward Gibbon

topic: Past, Tyrants, History, Transactions, Roman Empire

Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.

- Edward Gibbon

topic: Christian, Tyrants, Sober

There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed.

- Edward Kennedy

topic: Tyrants, Doubt, Hussein, Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Wmds In Iraq

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires.

- Edward Said

source: Edward W. Said (2014). “Orientalism”, p.21, Vintage

topic: Order, Tyrants, Democracy, Orientalism

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

- Elbert Hubbard

topic: Life, Freedom, Tyrants

The tyrant should take heed to what he doth, Since every victim-carrion turns to use, And drives a chariot, like a god made wroth, Against each piled injustice.

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

topic: Tyrants, Use, Injustice, Carrion

History has a long-range perspective. It ultimately passes stern judgment on tyrants and vindicates those who fought, suffered, were imprisoned, and died for human freedom, against political oppression and economic slavery.

- Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

source: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1949). “Labor's Own William Z. Foster: A Communist's Fifty Years of Working-class Leadership and Struggle”, New York : New Century Publishers

topic: Peace, Tyrants, Long, Sufferers, Economic Slavery

A great nation like the United States has many and varied interests, and we need both to do business with tyrants and to engage constantly in multilateral diplomacy.

- Elliott Abrams

topic: Tyrants, United States, Needs

Tyrants are always assassinated too late. That is their great excuse.

- Emile M. Cioran

topic: Freedom, Tyrants, Too Late

When sometimes, behind his back, they called him a tyrant, he merely smiled and uttered this profound observation: If some day I turn liberal, they will say I have let them down.

- Emile Zola

topic: Tyrants, Profound, Sometimes

It is remarkable how many misconceptions there are here about life in the developing world and I think that that knowledge gap has done a lot to contribute to the imbalance quite frankly.

- Emma Thompson

topic: Thinking, Tyrants, Done

Intolerance of oppression, the desire to be free and develop one personality to its full limits, is not enough to make one an anarchist. That aspiration towards unlimited freedom, if not tempered by a love for mankind and by the desire that all should enjoy equal freedom, may well create rebels who soon become exploiters and tyrants.

- Errico Malatesta

source: Errico Malatesta (2015). “Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta”, p.17, PM Press

topic: Tyrants, Personality, Desire

While we are under the tyranny of Priests, it will ever be their interest, to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith.

- Ethan Allen

topic: Order, Law, Tyrants

Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.

- Etienne de La Boetie

source: "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude". Book by Etienne de La Boetie, 1576.

topic: Fall, Hands, Tyrants, Servitude, Enslavement

It has always happened that tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration.

- Etienne de La Boetie

topic: Order, Tyrants, People, Servility

If Truth is taken away from us, then Right and Wrong are taken from us as well. If we don't know Right and Wrong, then we can't, we won't control ourselves, but will look to someone else to bring order through brute force and raw power. We will be controlled by a tyrant, and we will no longer be free...

- Frank Peretti

topic: Taken, Order, Tyrants, Brute Force, Control Ourselves

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

- Frederick Douglass

topic: Struggle, Blow, Tyrants, Democracy And Human Rights, Price Of Freedom

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

- Frederick Douglass

topic: Freedom, Tyrants, Endurance

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

- Frederick Douglass

source: Frederick Douglass (2013). “Selected Addresses of Frederick Douglass”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

topic: Freedom, Tyrants, Rights

Spineless politics do not change the mind of a tyrant.

- Friedrich Kellner

source: "My Opposition, Volume 1 (May 29, 1940)". Diary by Friedrich Kellner, 2011.

topic: Tyrants, Mind, Spineless

That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

- Gary Shteyngart

topic: Tyrants, Attention, Mercy

Today the primary threat to the liberties of the American people comes not from communism, foreign tyrants or dictators. It comes from the tendency on our own shores to centralize power, to trust bureaucracies rather than people.

- George Allen

topic: Tyrants, People, Liberty

I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

- George C. Wallace

source: First Inaugural Speech as Governor of Alabama, January 1963.

topic: Dust, Tyrants, Feet, Racial Segregation, Gauntlet

The big tyrants never face justice

- George Galloway

source: "Interview with British MP George Galloway". Interview with Thom Hartmann, www.thomhartmann.com. May 27, 2005.

topic: Tyrants, Justice, Faces

Time and again in this century, the political map of the world was transformed. And ineach instance a new world order came about through the advent of a new tyrant or the outbreakÂ of a bloody global war, or its end.

- George H. W. Bush

topic: War, Order, Tyrants, Outbreaks

Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities.

- George Mason

source: "The Journal of the Debates in the Convention which Framed the Constitution of the United States, May-September, 1787", Volume 2, as recorded by James Madison, 1908.

topic: Country, Tyrants, Heaven, Petty Tyrants

That slow poison [slavery] is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our people. Every gentlemen here is born a petty tyrant, practiced in acts of despotism and cruelty.

- George Mason

topic: Tyrants, People, Mind, Petty Tyrants

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

- George Mason

topic: Art, Tyrants, Slavery

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

- George W. Bush

topic: Tyrants

See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.

- George W. Bush

topic: Tyrants, Dumb, Deceit, Catapults, Bushism

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

- Georges Bernanos

source: Georges Bernanos (1955). “Last essays”

topic: Mean, Tyrants, Deception, Ends And Means, Ends Justify The Means

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced on his throne.

- Georges Clemenceau

source: "Antisemitism: Part One of The Origins of Totalitarianism". Book by Hannah Arendt, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. 127, 2012.

topic: Land, Tyrants, Thrones

One must never compromise with tyrants. One can only strike at kings through the head. Nothing can be expected from European kings except by force of arms. I vote for the death of the tyrant.

- Georges Danton

topic: Kings, Tyrants, Arms, Never Compromise, French Revolution

. . . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them.

- Gerry Spence

topic: Tyrants, America, People, Orwellian

A tyrant institutionalises stupidity, but he is the first servant of his own system and the first to be installed within it.

- Gilles Deleuze

source: Gilles Deleuze, Paul Patton (2004). “Difference and Repetition”, p.151, A&C Black

topic: Tyrants, Stupidity, Firsts

I came into the world charged with the duty to uphold the right in every place, to destroy sin and evil... the only reason I took birth was to see that righteousness may flourish, that good may live, and tyrants be torn out by their roots.

- Guru Gobind Singh

topic: Tyrants, Roots, Evil

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.

- Hannah Arendt

topic: Women, Thinking, Tyrants

Propaganda replaces moral philosophy.

- Hans Morgenthau

topic: Philosophy, Tyrants, Moral, Moral Philosophy

None but tyrants have any business to be afraid.

- Hardouin de Perefixe de Beaumont

topic: Tyrants, Revolution

Propaganda is persuading people to make up their minds while withholding some of the facts from them.

- Harold Evans

topic: Tyrants, People, Mind, Persuading

Public opinion, - a tyrant, sitting in the dark, wrapt up in mystification and vague terrors of obscurity; deriving power no one knows from whom ... - but irresistible in its power to quell thought, to repress action, to silence conviction ...

- Harriet Martineau

topic: Dark, Tyrants, Silence, Sitting In The Dark

Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Color does not necessarily denote quality, content or value. [If] a black is a tyrant, he is first and foremost a tyrant, then he incidentally is black. Bush is a tyrant and if he gathers around him black tyrants, they all have to be treated as they are being treated.

- Harry Belafonte

topic: Color, Tyrants, Black

No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution.

- Harry Belafonte

topic: Tyrants, People, Support

It seems to be almost inevitable that the man who accepts a subordinate economic position in the Family degenerates into a loafer and a tyrant.

- Helen Bosanquet

source: Helen Bosanquet, Bernard Bosanquet (1996). “Helen and Bernard Bosanquet: Works on economics & social welfare: the philosophy of the state and the practice of welfare”

topic: Men, Tyrants, Degenerates, Loafers

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.

- Helen Dunmore

topic: Tyrants, Want, Opponents

It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice.

- Henry A. Wallace

topic: Tyrants, Growth, Prejudice

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

- Henry David Thoreau

topic: Confidence, Tyrants, Political

I would rather be my own tyrant than have someone else tyrannize me.

- Henry Flagler

topic: Tyrants

Democracy and religion stand or fall together. Where democracy has been destroyed, religion has been doomed. Where religion has been trampled down, democracy has ceased to exist.... Tyrants have come and have had their day and then have passed while religion has survived them all.

- Herbert H. Lehman

topic: Fall, Tyrants, Democracy, Survived

The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.

- Herman Melville

topic: Past, Tyrants, Wife

If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

- Howard Zinn

topic: Tyrants, Ideas, Soldier, Patrolling, Control Ourselves

Adding an overarching tier of tyrants the EU to European governments has benefited Europeans as a second hangman enhances the health of a condemned man.

- Ilana Mercer

topic: Men, Government, Tyrants, Hangman

The tyranny that now exists is actual. That which may exist in the future is potential. If we are always to draw back from change with the thought that the change may be for the worse, then there is no hope at all of ever escaping injustice.

- Isaac Asimov

topic: Escaping, Tyrants, May

Conformities are called for much more eagerly today than yesterday... skeptics, liberals, individuals with a taste for private life and their own inner standards of behavior, are objects of fear and derision and targets of persecution for either side... in the great ideological wars of our time.

- Isaiah Berlin

topic: War, Tyrants, Yesterday, Derision, Ideological

The Allies had made war on Napoleon as a tyrant and an oppressor of nations; yet once they had got him out of the way, they did him the favor of representing him as the torchbearer of the French Revolution. They did him the further favor of repeating his mistakes and besting him at them.

- J. Christopher Herold

source: "Napoleon".

topic: War, Mistake, Tyrants, Representing

Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!

- J. K. Rowling

topic: Tyrants, Ideas, People, Rise Against, Strike Back

Nor is the guilt entirely with the warmongers, plutocrats and demagogues. If people permit exploitation and regimentation in any name, they deserve their slavery. A tyrant does not make his tyranny possible. It is made by the people and not otherwise.

- Jack Parsons

topic: Names, Tyrants, People, Warmongers, Regimentation

Tremble, ye tyrants, for ye can not die.

- Jacques Delille

source: "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 825, L'Immortalité de l'Âme, 1922.

topic: Tyrants, Tyranny, Can Not

Whilst so much is being done in the world, to ameliorate the condition of mankind, and the spirit of Freedom is marching with rapid strides and causing tyrants to tremble, may America awake from the apathy in which she has long slumbered.

- James Forten

topic: Tyrants, America, Long, Being Done

Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.

- James Joyce

topic: Heart, Dark, Tyrants, Tiredness, Dark Secrets

Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.

- James Madison

topic: Tyrants, Liberty, Cry, Rallying, Rallying Cry

[Slave] trade ... is the most shocking violation of the law of nature, has a direct tendency to diminish ... liberty, and makes every dealer in it a tyrant, from the director of an African company to the petty chapman [peddler].... It is a clear truth, that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.

Taxation without representation is tyranny.

source: "Argument Against the Writs of Assistance". "Argument Against the Writs of Assistance" by James Otis Jr., 1761.

topic: Men, Law, Tyrants, Dealer, Peddler

Every man may reign secure in his petty tyranny, and spread terror and desolation around him, until the trump of the Archangel shall excite different emotions in his soul.

topic: Tyrants, Taxation Without Representation, Tyranny

Every one with this writ may be a tyrant; if this commission be legal, a tyrant in a legal manner, also, may control, imprison, or murder any one within the realm.

source: "James Otis: Against Writs of Assistance". James Otis' speech (February 1761), as quoted in William Tudor "James Otis's Speech on the Writs of Assistance", books.google.com. 1906.

topic: Men, Tyrants, Soul, Desolation, Different Emotions