Quotes About Tyranny

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

There is a worse tyranny than that of ill-treatment. It is the tyranny of tears, vapours, appeals to feelings of affection and of gratitude!

I believe that we will see cases like these that will continue because we're talking about companies that are doing business with a tyranny and a dictatorship. And when they do business with a dictatorship, a tyranny, they will have problems like this. This, I believe, is the beginning of several problems that there will be over the next few years because we are talking about American companies that now want to get cozy with this regime, and they will find themselves in very serious problems such as those we're seeing at this time with the Carnival Company.

... if your heart and your honest body can be controlled by the state, or controlled by community taboo, are you not then, and in that case, no more than a slave ruled by outside force? What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart, and that attempts to dictate the public career of an honest human body?

I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.

I have no desire to go in for tyranny or to play the part of King Charles. I hate tyranny in any field of human activity.

Democracy, which began by liberating man politically, has developed a dangerous tendency to enslave him through the tyranny of majorities and the deadly power of their opinion.

Two hundred years ago the forces of freedom challenged this idea. The children of the new enlightenment rose up to defy the tyranny of arrogant clergy and the censorship of pious bureaucrats. They boldly proclaimed that the state must be free from religious coercion and that religion must be free from state control. All individuals have the right to pursue the dictates of their own conscience. All citizens even have the right not to be religious at all.

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.

Today it is time for strong and courageous people because only they can achieve victory and rid the world of tyranny.

The principle of allegiance to the Constitution is basic to our freedom....when you see government invading any of these realms of freedom which we have under our Constitution, you will know that they are putting shackles on your liberty, and that tyranny is creeping upon you, ...no matter what the reason and excuse therefore may be.

The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth.

Civilization is now under the tyranny of relativism.

The cumulative effect of the Romantic theory of creativity, as played out in the context of belief in the virtue of the avant-garde, is that while the art world has effectively freed itself from the tyranny of artistic tradition and its historic patronage system, it has ended up inhabiting an autonomous but perceived irrelevance.

The right to bear arms is because it's the last form of defense against tyranny.

Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final.

[The Bill of Rights is] designed to protect individuals and minorities against the tyranny of the majority, but it's also designed to protect the people against bureaucracy, against the government.

Tyranny is abhorrent, freedom benefits all, whereas violence benefits no one for long.

Religion gives us a place to stand outside politics, and without it we're vulnerable to a system in which the state defines everything, which is the essence of tyranny.

Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens' attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II's of England via the Armada, Germany's twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan's bid for an empire of Asia; 3) incompetence or decadence, as in the case of the late Roman empire, the last Romanovs and the last imperial dynasty of China; and finally 4) folly or perversity.

The majority falls prey to the delusion–popular in some circles–that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth–born of experience–is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime usually do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed only for those exceptionally rare circumstances when all other rights have failed. A free people can only afford to make this mistake once.

Liberty, when it degrades into licentiousness, begets confusion, and frequently ends in tyranny or some woeful confusion.

Tyranny is for the worst of treasons.

Of all human ills, greatest is fortune's wayward tyranny.

Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.

Resistance to tyranny is service to God.

The right constitutions, three in number- kingship, aristocracy, and polity- and the deviations from these, likewise three in number - tyranny from kingship, oligarchy from aristocracy, democracy from polity.

As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they're convinced that they'll eventually escape to some resort in the sky where lifeguards are superfluous and the pool never closes. Moreover, the faithful are usually willing to risk their skins in whatever military adventure their government may currently be promoting.

The discussion which was made by Luther, Melancthon, and the other persons who preceded the Reformation, opened the eyes or the public; and they got rid of the delusions which had been spread by the Pope of Rome, and emancipated mankind from the spiritual tyranny they were under, and brought about the establishment of that religion which we now enjoy in this country.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

History has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.

If you are curious, you won't be satisfied with the "tyranny of custom." People stuck in that rut might say "why?" and the first thing an exploratory person would say is "why not?"

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.

I preferred measuring deer tracks to tape - that I liked the wild liberty of the Red men better then the tyranny of my brothers.

Islam is a civilization that is fractured linguistically, ethnically, sectarian-wise, as ours is. What bin Laden has done, though, is to identify a number of issues that are tangible and visceral for Muslims. His indictment list of Western support for Arab tyranny, our ability to keep oil prices too low - at least until recently - our occupation of the Arabian Peninsula.

Immigration 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.

My films can be considered political action against the tyranny of good taste.

The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor.

Through the inevitable mismanagement of resources and goods at the disposal of the state, all forms of collectivism lead eventually to tyranny.

Even if leftists were able to get control of every institution they want to destroy, what they want is not possible. The circumstances for life on this planet that they want are not possible to achieve. The closest they can get to it is communism and tyranny where they have to force everybody to live the way they want.

Sycophancy toward those who hold power is a fact in every regime, and especially in a democracy, where, unlike tyranny, there is an accepted principle of legitimacy that breaks the inner will to resist.... Flattery of the people and incapacity to resist public opinion are the democratic vices, particularly among writers, artists, journalists and anyone else who is dependent on an audience.

This is true to party tyranny and it locks people in, especially outrageous at this time that people feel like they are being thrown under the bus by these two political parties and are demanding, you know, other options in large numbers.

It's time to override this fraud being committed on the American voter of the two-party tyranny of this private corporation of the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Where the law ends tyranny begins.

The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.

In America, it is indispensable that every well wisher of true liberty should understand that acts of tyranny can only proceed from the publick. The publick, then, is to be watched, in this country, as, in other countries kings and aristocrats are to be watched.

There's a certain amount of tyranny in all of us to some extent, and in some people it's much more developed than in others. It's a different balance which makes us all different.