quotations about tyrants and tyranny
Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.
CHARLES PEGUY
Oeuvres en prose
A cruel reign is disordered and hidden in darkness, and while all shake with terror at the sudden explosions, not even he who caused all this disturbance escapes unharmed.
SENECA
"On Clemency", Minor Dialogues: Together with the Dialogue on Clemency
Consider those grand agents and lieutenants of the devil, by whom he scourges and plagues the world under him, to-wit, tyrants; and was there ever any tyrant who was not also false and perfidious?
ROBERT SOUTH
Twelve Sermons
One submits to tyranny when one renounces the difference between what one wants to hear and what is actually the case.
MICHAEL BRIGUGLIO
"How is a tyrant identified?", Times of Malta, May 1, 2017
A company of tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions.
VOLTAIRE
Dictionnaire philosophique
A tyrant has the least respect for one whom he can conquer.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
The fundamental article of my political creed is, that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor; equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 13, 1815
Stability born of tyranny is a false stability.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
"The moral and practical case for democracy promotion", FOX News, May 9, 2017
If we should look under the skirt of the prosperous and prevailing tyrant, we should find, even in the days of his joys, such allays and abatements of his pleasure, as may serve to represent him presently miserable, besides his final infelicities.... And although all tyrants have not imaginative and fantastic consciences, yet all tyrants shall die and come to judgment; and such a man is not to be feared, not at all to be envied. And, in the mean time, can he be said to escape who hath an unquiet conscience, who is already designed for hell, he whom God hates, and the people curse, and who hath an evil name, and against whom all good men pray, and many desire to fight, and all wish him destroyed, and some contrive to do it? Is this a blessed man?
JEREMY TAYLOR
Sermon XXXV, The Sermons of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor
In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
Tyrants are rebels against the first laws of heaven and society: to oppose their ravages is an instinct of nature, the inspiration of God in the heart of man.
JOSIAH QUINCY
Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
PLATO
The Republic
What, in short, is the whole system of Europe towards America but an atrocious and insulting tyranny? One hemisphere of the earth, separated from the other by wide seas on both sides, having a different system of interests flowing from different climates, different soils, different productions, different modes of existence, and its own legal relations and duties, is made subservient to all the petty interests of the other, to their laws, their regulations, their passions and wars, and interdicted from social intercourse, from the interchange of mutual duties and comforts with their neighbors, enjoined on all men by the laws of nature. Happily these abuses of human rights are drawing to a close on both our continents, and are not likely to survive the present mad contest of the lions and tigers of the other.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Clement Caine, September 16, 1811
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
Tyrants in the course of time must eventually be overthrown because of the continual opposition of the oppressed. It is an unchanging Law, a constant rule, the penalty is certain, albeit that it is very slow coming to fruition.
FRANCESCO MARIO PAGANO
Saggi Politici
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
letter, November 11, 1937
It is right to destroy a tyrant, and sacrifice self, if it saves the country and rids the world of a monster.
CHARLOTTE CORDAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is easier to repress the advances of tyranny at first, than to destroy it when once established.
SOLON
attributed, Day's Collacon
In an ordinary despotism, the powers of a despot are limited by his bodily capacity, and by the calls of pleasure; he is but one man; there are but twelve hours in his day, and he is not disposed to employ more than a small part in dull business; he keeps the rest for the court, or the harem, or for society.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Clever tyrants are never punished; they have always some slight shade of virtue: they support the laws before destroying them.
VOLTAIRE
Mérope