Popular quotes about Tyranny! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 20
To rail and rant against tyranny is to manifest inferiority, for there is no tyranny but ignorance; to be conscious of one's powers is to lose consciousness of tyranny. Self government is not a remote aim. It is an intimate and inescapable fact. To govern oneself is a natural imperative, and all tyranny is the miscarriage of self government. The first requisite of freedom is to accept responsibility for the lack of it.
E.C. RiegelSnowden is not the disease. We don't have traitors or whistleblowers blooming all over because they are some sort of malady. The disease is war. We've been at war now and with no end in sight for over a dozen years, the longest in our history. War breeds tyranny. War breeds people who want to prosecute and persecute those who reveal that tyranny. So what we have is the government becoming more draconian - clearly understandable. It always does in a period of war. And as it becomes more draconian, more and more whistleblowers coming.
Lawrence WilkersonOf all the tyrannies that effect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.
Thomas PaineDemocracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people.
Pierre-Joseph ProudhonCommunism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity - in short, of tyranny - and it is committed to making tyranny universal.
Adlai E. StevensonThe worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny.
Michael ParentiNo tyranny is more cruel than the one practised in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves. And since a tyrant never lacks instruments for his tyranny, Tiberius always found judges ready to condemn as many people as he might suspect.
Baron de MontesquieuDemocratic forms of government are vulnerable to mass prejudice, the so-called tyranny of the majority.
Maggie GallagherSingle acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.
Thomas JeffersonA just city should favor justice and the just, hate tyranny and injustice, and give them both their just deserts.
Al-FarabiHeterosexuality is a die-hard custom through which male-supremacist institutions insure their own perpetuity and control over us. Women are kept, maintained and contained through terror, violence, and the spray of semen...[Lesbianism is] an ideological, political and philosophical means of liberation of all women from heterosexual tyranny.
Cheryl ClarkeWithout power, knowledge is useless. without knowledge, faith is tyranny. Without understanding, humanity is blind, and without all four, it is doomed.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.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.
Oscar WildeAmerica is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.
Peter KropotkinThe road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth.
William J. ClintonYeah, it's legal in the United States. It's part of our Constitution. You know, the right to bear arms is because that's the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It's to protect yourself from the police.
Ice TThe right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system - and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.
Ayn RandThe checks and balances is a way to prevent government from either devolving into an autocratic tyranny or an autocratic mob mentality.
Beau WillimonIn The Federalist, James Madison called the rage for equality 'a wicked project.' People differ and rewards differ-that's the essence of both liberty and justice. No nation that rewards effort, talent, inventiveness and luck can even pretend to cherish equal outcomes. In an inventive and dynamic society, equal (even relatively equal) incomes can be achieved only by abandoning liberty for tyranny.
Michael NovakWe have become the new american slaves: but there is a revolution coming. It is a revolution of individual liberty. It will free us without violence. It will begin with the self. It will spread to the workplace. It will turn our corporate masters into our servants. It will free us of government's tyranny. The revolution will spread to all corners of the nation, and at last, we shall be free.
Gerry Spence"All government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.
Emma GoldmanPower is the great evil with which we are contending. We have divided power between three branches of government and erected checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. However, where is the check on the power of the judiciary? If we fail to check the power of the judiciary, I predict that we will eventually live under judicial tyranny.
Patrick HenryAny practice of business which would dominate the country by its own selfish interest is a destruction of equality of opportunity. Government in business, except in emergency, is also a destruction of equal opportunity and the incarnation of tyranny through bureaucracy.
Herbert HooverAll the nations of the earth are crying out for liberty and equality. Away, away with tyranny and oppression!
Maria W. StewartThe more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age arrives, when multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former grows ever wilder, ever more dysfunctional in its extremities; whilst the latter seeks to increase its measure of control, until such efforts acquire diabolical tyranny.' - Traveller
Steven EriksonSome of the strongest resistance to necessary change is the result of what Jim O'Toole has so aptly characterized as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom."
Warren G. BennisWhen the Founders thought of democracy, they saw democracy in the political sphere - a sphere strictly limited by the Constitution's well-defined and enumerated powers given the federal government. Substituting democratic decision making for what should be private decision making is nothing less than tyranny dressed up.
Walter E. WilliamsIn the Laws it is maintained that the best constitution is made up of democracy and tyranny, which are either not constitutions at all, or are the worst of all. But they are nearer the truth who combine many forms; for the constitution is better which is made up of more numerous elements. The constitution proposed in the Laws has no element of monarchy at all; it is nothing but oligarchy and democracy, leaning rather to oligarchy.
AristotleAs in Jesus' time, so today, tyranny and pride need to be whipped out of the temple, and humility and divine Science to be welcomed in.
Mary Baker EddyThese, then, are the four kinds of royalty. First the monarchy of the heroic ages; this was exercised over voluntary subjects, but limited to certain functions; the king was a general and a judge, and had the control of religion The second is that of the barbarians, which is a hereditary despotic government in accordance with law. A third is the power of the so-called Aesynmete or Dictator; this is an elective tyranny. The fourth is the Lacedaemonian, which is in fact a generalship, hereditary and perpetual.
AristotleEveryone in the world is impacted by the United States' Big Brother attitude toward the world. We need countries to say no to the United States. The United States is the dominant power in the universe, with its eavesdropping abilities, cyber abilities. And the world is in danger with our tyranny.
Oliver StoneImmigration along with nonwhite birthrates will make white people a minority totally vulnerable to the political, social, and economic will of blacks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Orientals. A social upheaval is now beginning to occur that will be the funeral dirge of the America we love. I shudder to contemplate the future under nonwhite occupation; rapes, murders, robberies multiplied a hundred fold, illiteracy such as in Haiti, medicine such as in Mexico, and tyranny such as in Togoland.
David DukeI shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper - The Revolution - four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the government... And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."
Susan B. AnthonyPeople get good gigs because they stand up....You don't get picked. Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
Seth GodinI'm enjoying my life, post-menopause, so much. It's just so great to grow into yourself, and not be bothered with all that tyranny of biology.
Roseanne BarrThe lust of dominion innovates so imperceptibly that we become complete despots before our wanton abuse of power is perceived; the tyranny first exercised in the nursery is exhibited in various shapes and degrees in every stage of our existence.
Johann Georg Ritter von ZimmermannIt is manifest that the only security against the tyranny of the government lies in forcible resistance to the execution of the injustice; because the injustice will certainly be executed, unless it be forcibly resisted.
Lysander SpoonerThe ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.
Donald JamesThe clergy ... believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.
Thomas JeffersonThrough the inevitable mismanagement of resources and goods at the disposal of the state, all forms of collectivism lead eventually to tyranny.
Friedrich August von HayekDemocracy gives the aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be considered tyranny.
Walter E. WilliamsBut I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits by such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not much mind; this short life counts for too little in their eyes.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau