quotations about tyrants and tyranny
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
Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.
CHARLES PEGUY
Oeuvres en prose
A tyrant has the least respect for one whom he can conquer.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
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
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
Stability born of tyranny is a false stability.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
"The moral and practical case for democracy promotion", FOX News, May 9, 2017
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
In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
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
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
A company of tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions.
VOLTAIRE
Dictionnaire philosophique
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
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
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
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
Clever tyrants are never punished; they have always some slight shade of virtue: they support the laws before destroying them.
VOLTAIRE
Mérope
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)
It is easier to repress the advances of tyranny at first, than to destroy it when once established.
SOLON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny.... They're organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
It is better to have one tyrant than a hundred; one may demand two-thirds of all you possess; the hundred will pick you to the bone.
THEODORE DWIGHT
attributed, Day's Collacon