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Quotes & Sayings About Despotism

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Despotism Quotes By John Adams

This society [Jesuits] has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed the progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.

{Letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 4, 1816. Adams wrote an anonymous 4 volume work on the destructive history of the Jesuits} — John Adams

Despotism Quotes By Alexis De Tocqueville

Despotism alone can provide that atmosphere of secrecy which favors crooked dealing and enables the freebooters of finance to make illicit fortunes. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Despotism Quotes By Edward Gibbon

Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism. — Edward Gibbon

Despotism Quotes By Charles Caleb Colton

Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking. — Charles Caleb Colton

Despotism Quotes By Honore De Balzac

Despotism accomplishes great things illegally; liberty doesn't even go to the trouble of accomplishing small things legally. — Honore De Balzac

Despotism Quotes By Daniel Webster

If an angel should be winged from Heaven, on an errand of mercy to our country, the first accents that would glow on his lips would be, Beware! Be cautious! You have everything to lose; nothing to gain. We live under the only government that ever existed which was framed by the unrestrained and deliberate consultations of the people. Miracles do not cluster. That which has happened but once in six thousand years cannot be expected to happen often. Such a government, once gone, might leave a void, to be filled, for ages, with revolution and tumult, riot and despotism. — Daniel Webster

Despotism Quotes By John N. Gray

From being a movement aiming for universal freedom, communism turned into a system of universal despotism. That is the logic of utopia. — John N. Gray

Despotism Quotes By Odd Nerdrum

I believe in positive despotism. That means an exchange between people. I'm thinking about the fact that someone serves me breakfast in my bed. I can not see anything wrong in that. Because everything is a question of exchanges between people. Everyone has some specific possibilities and can to a certain extent do whatever they want. If one wants to become rich one can study economy and if one wants to be poor one can choose to become a professor in butterfly wings for example. So we can choose. — Odd Nerdrum

Despotism Quotes By B.F. Skinner

In a democracy, there is no check against despotism, because the principle of democracy is supposed to be itself a check. But it guarantees only that the majority will not be despotically ruled. — B.F. Skinner

Despotism Quotes By Mary McCarthy

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. — Mary McCarthy

Despotism Quotes By Mehmet Murat Ildan

Earthquake means destruction; dictator means destruction! In the case of earthquake, you need a strong building; in the case of dictator, you need an educated rational mind, because an irrational ignorant mind always serves the dictator! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Despotism Quotes By Kissinger Henry

Because i have been a man of order, my efforts were directed towards the attainment of a real, not a deceptive, freedom...I have always considered despotism of any kind a symptom of weakness. Where it appears, it condemns itself; most intolerably where it appears behind the mask of advancing the cause of liberty. — Kissinger Henry

Despotism Quotes By Marvin Harris

There already exists the electronic capability for the tracking of individual behavior by centralized networks of surveillance and record-keeping computers. It is highly probable that the conversion to nuclear energy production will provide precisely those basic material conditions most appropriate for using the power of the computer to establish a new and enduring form of despotism. Only by decentralizing our basic mode of energy production - by breaking the cartels that monopolize the present system of energy production and by creating new decentralized forms of energy technology - can we restore the ecological and cultural configuration that led to the emergence of political democracy in Europe. — Marvin Harris

Despotism Quotes By George Washington

What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing! I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking, thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable & tremendous! What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal & falacious! Would to God that wise measures may be taken in time to avert the consequences we have but too much reason to apprehend. — George Washington

Despotism Quotes By Voltaire

It has taken seas of blood to drown the idol of despotism, but the English do not think they bought their laws too dearly. — Voltaire

Despotism Quotes By Leon Gambetta

Despotism and freedom of the press cannot exist together. — Leon Gambetta

Despotism Quotes By Oscar Wilde

Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. — Oscar Wilde

Despotism Quotes By Lord Acton

Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers. — Lord Acton

Despotism Quotes By Gregory David Roberts

Despotism despieses nothing so much as righteousness in its victims — Gregory David Roberts

Despotism Quotes By Ludwig Von Mises

The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion. — Ludwig Von Mises

Despotism Quotes By Jean-Jacques Rousseau

From this moment there would be no question of virtue or morality; for despotism cui ex honesto nulla est spes, wherever it prevails, admits no other master; it no sooner speaks than probity and duty lose their weight and blind obedience is the only virtue which slaves can still practice. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Despotism Quotes By Taylor Caldwell

Republics never survive, for their people do not like freedom but prefer to be led and guided and flattered and seduced into slavery by a benevolent, or not so, benevolent despot. They want to worship Caesar. So, American republicanism will inevitably die and become a democracy, and then decline, as Aristotle said into a despotism. — Taylor Caldwell

Despotism Quotes By James Monroe

How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism. — James Monroe

Despotism Quotes By Anton Chekhov

How does Chekhov's artistic "programme" comment on the message of The Duel, and vice versa? I should like to be a free artist and nothing more, and I regret that God has not given me the power to be one. I hate lying and violence in all their forms ... Pharisaism, stupidity and despotism reign not in merchants' houses and prisons alone. I see them in science, in literature, in the younger generation ... That is why I have no preference either for gendarmes, or for butchers, or for scientists, or for writers, or for the younger generation. I regard trade-marks and labels as a superstition. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom - freedom from violence and lying, whatever forms they may take. This is the programme I would follow if I were a great artist.* — Anton Chekhov

Despotism Quotes By G.K. Chesterton

If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep. — G.K. Chesterton

Despotism Quotes By Abraham Lincoln

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left. — Abraham Lincoln

Despotism Quotes By Napoleon Bonaparte

Republican despotism is more fertile in acts of tyranny, because everyone has a hand in it. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Despotism Quotes By Thomas Sowell

'Fair' is one of the most dangerous concepts in politics. Since no two people are likely to agree on what is 'fair,' this means that there must be some third party with power - the government - to impose its will. The road to despotism is paved with 'fairness'. — Thomas Sowell

Despotism Quotes By Gordon S. Wood

173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one," wrote Jefferson in 1785 in his Notes on the State of Virginia. "An elective despotism was not the government we fought for."31 — Gordon S. Wood

Despotism Quotes By Jean-Paul Marat

It seems that the inevitable fate of man is never attain complete freedom: princes everywhere tend to despotism and the people to servitude. — Jean-Paul Marat

Despotism Quotes By John Stuart Mill

Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men. — John Stuart Mill

Despotism Quotes By Apollonius Of Tyana

Never may a man prone to believe scandal be a despot or a popular leader! Under his guidance, democracy itself will be despotism. — Apollonius Of Tyana

Despotism Quotes By John Stuart Mill

Auguste Comte, in particular, whose social system, as unfolded in his Systeme de Politique Positive, aims at establishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers. — John Stuart Mill

Despotism Quotes By Alexis De Tocqueville

One's love for despotism is in exact proportion to one's contempt for one's country. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Despotism Quotes By Giovanni Ruffini

Travelers describe a tree in the island of Java whose pestiferous exhalations blight every tiny blade of grass within the compass of its shade. So it is with despotism. — Giovanni Ruffini

Despotism Quotes By Georg Buchner

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. — Georg Buchner

Despotism Quotes By Bertrand Russell

Russell observes that "the merits of democracy are negative: it does not ensure good government, but it prevents certain evils," such as the evil of a small group of individuals achieving a secure monopoly on political power. The chief peril for the politician, Russell insists, is love of power. And politicians can easily yield to the love of power on the pretense that they are pursuing some absolute good. — Bertrand Russell

Despotism Quotes By Orrin Woodward

Access to unlimited funds by a government, not surprisingly, leads to an unlimited government. — Orrin Woodward

Despotism Quotes By Maximilien Robespierre

Formerly, when a king died at Versailles the reign of his successor was immediately announced by the cry: "The king is dead, long live the king", in order to make it understood that despotism is immortal! Now an entire people, moved by a sublime instinct, cried: Long live the Republic! to teach the universe that tyranny died with the tyrant. — Maximilien Robespierre

Despotism Quotes By Alexis De Tocqueville

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Despotism Quotes By Thomas Jefferson

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed. — Thomas Jefferson

Despotism Quotes By Frank Herbert

You can't build politics on love," he said. "People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos. — Frank Herbert

Despotism Quotes By Alexis De Tocqueville

It is far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism, for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Despotism Quotes By Antoine Rivarol

The despotism of will in ideas is styled plan, project, character, obstinacy; its despotism in desires is called passion. — Antoine Rivarol

Despotism Quotes By Alexander Carson

As God can protect his people under the greatest despotism, so the utmost civil liberty is no safety to them without the immediate protection of his Almighty arm. I fear that Christians in this country have too great a confidence in political institutions ... [rather] than of the government of God. — Alexander Carson

Despotism Quotes By Alexis De Tocqueville

This point deserves attention, for if a democratic republic similar to that of the United States were ever founded in a country where the power of a single individual had previously subsisted, and the effects of a centralized administration had sunk deep into the habits and the laws of the people, I do not hesitate to assert, that in that country a more insufferable despotism would prevail than any which now exists in the monarchical States of Europe, or indeed than any which could be found on this side of the confines of Asia. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Despotism Quotes By Friedrich August Von Hayek

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Despotism Quotes By Lord Byron

Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice
The weakness and the wickedness of luxury
The negligence
the apathy
the evils Of sensual sloth
produces ten thousand tyrants, Whose delegated cruelty surpasses The worst acts of one energetic master, However harsh and hard in his own bearing. — Lord Byron

Despotism Quotes By Jeff Grubb

I must admit that I feel that the best form of government is benevolent despotism. — Jeff Grubb

Despotism Quotes By Marquis De Lafayette

I am astonished but not discouraged by my enormous responsibility. Devoted both from affection and duty to the cause of the people, I shall combat with equal ardor aristocracy, despotism, and faction. — Marquis De Lafayette

Despotism Quotes By Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign - for all these titles are synonymous - imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once ... [and so] property engenders despotism ... That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse ... if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings - kings in proportion to their facultes bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion? — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Despotism Quotes By Alexis De Tocqueville

A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Despotism Quotes By George Washington

The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. — George Washington

Despotism Quotes By Henry Charles Lea

To understand fully the causes which drove so many thousands into schism and heresy, leading to wars and persecutions, and the establishment of the Inquisition, it is necessary{6} to cast a glance at the character of the men who represented the Church before the people, and at the use which they made, for good or for evil, of the absolute spiritual despotism which had become established. In — Henry Charles Lea

Despotism Quotes By William Floyd

Have any of our friends got off the Island with their families, or what must they submit to? Despotism or destruction, I fear, is their fate. — William Floyd

Despotism Quotes By Anton Szandor LaVey

The first time I read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, my instinctive reaction was, so what's wrong with THAT? Isn't that the way any master plan should work? Doesn't the public deserve - nay, demand - such despotism? — Anton Szandor LaVey

Despotism Quotes By James Madison

[Restraints on the press] in all ages, have debauched morals, depressed liberty, shackled religion, supported despotism, and deluged the scaffold with blood. — James Madison

Despotism Quotes By John Adams

The nation which will not adopt an equilibrium of power must adopt a despotism. There is no other alternative. — John Adams

Despotism Quotes By George Orwell

The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism. — George Orwell

Despotism Quotes By Joseph Addison

It is odd to consider the connection between despotism and barbarity, and how the making one person more than man makes the rest less. — Joseph Addison

Despotism Quotes By Reza Aslan

However, Saudi Arabia quickly discovered what the rest of the world would soon learn. Fundamentalism, in all religious traditions, is impervious to suppression. The more one tries to squelch it, the stronger it becomes. Counter it with cruelty, and it gains adherents. Kill its leaders, and they become martyrs. Respond with despotism, and it becomes the sole voice of opposition. Try to control it, and it will turn against you. Try to appease it, and it will take control. — Reza Aslan

Despotism Quotes By Russell Kirk

Moral decay first hampers and then strangles honest government, regular commerce, and even the ability to take genuine pleasure in the goods of this world. Compulsion is applied from above as self-discipline relaxes below, and the last liberties expire under the weight of a unitary state ... Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary that divided good from evil is overthrown; kings and nations are guided by chance and none can say where are the natural limits of despotism and the bound of license. — Russell Kirk

Despotism Quotes By Frank Prochaska

Which is more subversive-and corrosive-to believe in altruism or to see it simply as a cloak of self interest? Even if altruism did not exist, it would be necessary to believe in it. Pessimists in power are prone to despotism. — Frank Prochaska

Despotism Quotes By George W. Bush

Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter? — George W. Bush

Despotism Quotes By Alexis De Tocqueville

Despotism may be able to do without religion, but democracy cannot. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Despotism Quotes By Marquis De Sade

Religions are the cradles of despotism. — Marquis De Sade

Despotism Quotes By D. Allen Miller

Learning has been liberated from the despotism of the few and is now available to the mass public for one's own evolution. Yet many of us continue to find solace in illusions, in conformity to systematical oppression, in distractions that keep us mentally, socially and often physically retarded. — D. Allen Miller

Despotism Quotes By Charles Caleb Colton

There is this of good in real evils; they deliver us, while they last, from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary. — Charles Caleb Colton

Despotism Quotes By Mark Steyn

In his book "Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift", Paul Rahe writes, "Human dignity is bound up with taking responsibility for conducting one's own affairs." But today the state cocoons "one's own affairs" so thoroughly as to remove almost all responsibility from modern life, and much of human dignity with it. And, if personal consequences have been all but abolished, societal consequences are harder to dodge ... A society of children cannot survive, no matter how all-embracing the government nanny. — Mark Steyn

Despotism Quotes By Benjamin Constant

The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb. — Benjamin Constant

Despotism Quotes By Ayn Rand

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. — Ayn Rand

Despotism Quotes By Lyndon B. Johnson

As it was 189 years ago, so today the cause of America is a revolutionary cause. And I am proud this morning to salute you as fellow revolutionaries. Neither you nor I are willing to accept the tyranny of poverty, nor the dictatorship of ignorance, nor the despotism of ill health, nor the oppression of bias and prejudice and bigotry. We want change. We want progress. We want it both abroad and at homeand we aim to get it. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Despotism Quotes By Alexis De Tocqueville

Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Despotism Quotes By Matthew Stewart

At its best, management theory is part of the democratic promise of America. It aims to replace the despotism of the old bosses with the rule of scientific law. It offers economic power to all who have the talent and energy to attain it. — Matthew Stewart

Despotism Quotes By Theodore Roosevelt

If this country is really to go forward along the path of social and economic justice, there must be a new party of nationwide and non-sectional principles, a party where the titular national chiefs and the real state leaders shall be in genuine accord, a party in whose counsels the people shall be supreme, a party that shall represent in the nation and the several states alike the same cause, the cause of human rights and of governmental efficiency. At present both the old parties are controlled by professional politicians in the interests of the privileged classes, and apparently each has set up as its ideal of business and political development a government by financial despotism tempered by make-believe political assassination. Democrat and Republican alike, they represent government of the needy many by professional politicians in the interests of the rich few. This is class government, and class government of a peculiarly unwholesome kind. — Theodore Roosevelt

Despotism Quotes By Thomas Paine

It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism. — Thomas Paine

Despotism Quotes By J. Christopher Herold

The right-wing Tories and the conservative Whigs fought Napoleon as the Usurper and the Enemy of the Established Order; the liberal Tories and the radical Whigs fought him as the Betrayer of the Revolution and the Enslaver of Europe; they were all agreed in fighting him, and his notion that their disagreement signified national disunion was mere wishful thinking. All dictators since his time have fallen into the same trap: themselves blind to the values of liberty, they cannot conceive that people who disagree on its meaning can nevertheless unite in upholding their freedoms against patent despotism. — J. Christopher Herold

Despotism Quotes By Victor Hugo

You who are Prejudice, Abuse, Ignominy, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice, Fanaticism, beware of the wide-eyed urchin. He will grow up. — Victor Hugo

Despotism Quotes By Calvin Coolidge

Despotism has forever had a powerful hold upon the world. Autocratic government, not self-government, has been the prevailing state of mankind. The record of past history is the record, not of the success of republics, but of their failure. — Calvin Coolidge

Despotism Quotes By Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Despotism Quotes By Nelson Algren

faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose. Such fears as these are a solvent that can eat out the cement that binds the stones together; they may in the end subject us to a despotism as evil as any that we dread; and they can be allayed only in so far as we refuse to proceed on suspicion, and trust one another until we have tangible ground for misgiving. The mutual confidence on which all else depends can be maintained only by an open mind and a brave reliance upon free discussion. I do not say that — Nelson Algren

Despotism Quotes By Thomas Huxley

If the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining freedom, it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal with political, as they now deal with scientific questions. — Thomas Huxley

Despotism Quotes By P.D. James

Creativity doesn't flourish in an atmosphere of despotism, coercion and fear. — P.D. James

Despotism Quotes By Janet Wallach

What would happen if we withdrew? ... After the enormous expenditure which we have incurred in freeing this country from the withering despotism of the Turk, to hand it back to anarchy and confusion, and to take no responsibility for its development would be an act of folly and quite indefensible. — Janet Wallach

Despotism Quotes By Immanuel Kant

Law And Freedom without Violence (Anarchy)
Law And Violence without Freedom (Despotism)
Violence without Freedom And Law (Barbarism)
Violence with Freedom And Law (Republic) — Immanuel Kant

Despotism Quotes By Edward Everett

Beneath a free government there is nothing but the intelligence of the people to keep the people's peace. Order must be preserved, not by a military police or regiments of horse-guards, but by the spontaneous concert of a well-informed population, resolved that the rights which have been rescued from despotism shall not be subverted by anarchy. — Edward Everett

Despotism Quotes By Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant; democracy, to many. — Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington

Despotism Quotes By Percy Bysshe Shelley

The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Despotism Quotes By Christopher Hitchens

It is sometimes argued that disbelief in a fearful and tempting heavenly despotism makes life into something arid and tedious and cynical: a mere existence without any consolation or any awareness of the numinous or the transcendent. What nonsense this is. In the first place, it commits an obvious error. It seems to say that we ought not to believe that we are an evolved animal species with faulty components and a short lifespan for ourselves and our globe, lest the consequences of the belief be unwelcome or discreditable to us. Could anything show more clearly the bad effects of wish-thinking? There can be no serious ethical position based on denial or a refusal to look the facts squarely in the face. But this does not mean that we must stare into the abyss all the time. (Only religion, oddly enough, has ever required that we obsessively do that.) — Christopher Hitchens

Despotism Quotes By Jack Vance

Public convenience or dignity means nothing; police prerogatives assume the status of divine law. Submissiveness is demanded. If a police officer kills a civilian, it is a regrettable circumstance: the officer was possibly over-zealous. If a civilian kills a police officer all hell breaks loose. The police foam at the mouth. All other business comes to a standstill until the perpetrator of this most dastardly act is found out. Inevitably, when apprehended, he is beaten or otherwise tortured for his intolerable presumption ... The police complain that they cannot function efficiently, that criminals escape them. Better a hundred unchecked criminals than the despotism of one unbridled police force. — Jack Vance

Despotism Quotes By G.K. Chesterton

Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on art the Church seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism the Church seems too artistic. When you quarrel with us now you class us with kingship and despotism; but when you quarrelled with us first it was because we would not accept the divine despotism of Henry VIII. The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of a permanent virtue. — G.K. Chesterton

Despotism Quotes By Abraham Lincoln

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it, 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. — Abraham Lincoln

Despotism Quotes By Alexis De Tocqueville

If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force. Anarchy will then be the result, but it will have been brought about by despotism. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Despotism Quotes By Mark Twain

Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government, and earthly despotism would be the absolute perfect earthly government if the conditions were the same; namely the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual; but as a perishable, perfect man must die and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible. — Mark Twain

Despotism Quotes By Hassan Nasrallah

It is our pride that the Great Satan (U.S.) and the head of despotism, corruption and arrogance in modern times considers us as an enemy that should be listed in the terrorism list ... I say to every member of Hezbollah (should) be happy and proud that your party has been placed on the list of terrorist organizations as the U.S. view it — Hassan Nasrallah

Despotism Quotes By Ron Chernow

Hamilton's besetting fear was that American democracy would be spoiled by demagogues who would mouth populist shibboleths to conceal their despotism. — Ron Chernow

Despotism Quotes By Eric Liu

Alexis de Tocqueville warned that as the economy and government of America got bigger, citizens could become smaller: less practiced in the forms of everyday power, more dependent on vast distant social machines, more isolated and atomized--and therefore more susceptible to despotism.

He warned that if the "habits of the heart" fed by civic clubs and active self-government evaporated, citizens would regress to pure egoism. They would stop thinking about things greater than their immediate circle. Public life would disappear. And that would only accelerate their own disempowerment.

This is painfully close to a description of the United States since Trump and Europe since Brexit. And the only way to reverse this vicious cycle of retreat and atrophy is to reverse it: to find a sense of purpose that is greater than the self, and to exercise power with others and for others in democratic life. — Eric Liu

Despotism Quotes By Frank Herbert

People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos. We can't have that, can we? And how do you make despotism lovable? — Frank Herbert

Despotism Quotes By Thomas Jefferson

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading subjugation on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it: for man is an imitative animal. — Thomas Jefferson

Despotism Quotes By Victor Hugo

Despotism is a long crime. — Victor Hugo