Dictatorship Tyranny Quotes & Sayings

[ ... ] dictatorship, the most extreme form of tyranny, can never lead to social liberation. — Noam Chomsky

I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer. — Philip Pullman

The conventional word that is employed to describe tyranny is "systematic." The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not. (The only rule of thumb was: whatever is not compulsory is forbidden.) Thus, the ruled can always be found to be in the wrong. — Christopher Hitchens

Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it. — Criss Jami

The human condition for the vast majority of people on this planet for the entire time of what humanity has been here has been bondage and tyranny, dictatorship, pestilence. That's really what American exceptionalism is, when you get right down to it. — Rush Limbaugh

In vain these economic royalists seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship. — Bruce Coville

The forces of moderation and democracy must, and will, prevail against extremism and dictatorship. I will not be intimidated ... Despite threats of death, I will not acquiesce to tyranny, but rather lead the fight against it. — Benazir Bhutto

Our ultimate weapon is not our guns but our beliefs ... Ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit and anywhere, any time, ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same. Freedom not tyranny. Democracy not dictatorship. The rule of law not the rule of the secret police. The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defence and our first line of attack. — Tony Blair

Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police. — Tony Blair

It is really exhausting to live in a dictatorship of 'Me', which is basically a tyranny of others. — Stefan Molyneux

The fantasist in whom the reality barrier has broken down is unreliable, believing things when he should not, and telling things as true when they are not. — Simon Blackburn

It's hard to overstate how deep the need can get for things to make sense. — John Darnielle

With 'Harry Potter,' I've been all over the world. I probably wouldn't have gone to New York so young if it weren't for the films. — Emma Watson

The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them. — Gene Sharp

Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad. — Rob Pike

If at age 10 I say there are monsters in the basement and they don't believe it, I would have stayed in that house. My father would have said "Shut up and get to your room." So I thought the only sanctioned tyranny in the world is parenthood and everybody goes "Yeah." It's a dictatorship - parenthood. — Guillermo Del Toro

The best lies carry an element of truth. — Frances Fowlkes

The tyranny of this dictatorship isn't primarily the fault of Big Business, nor of the demagogues who do their dirty work. It's the fault of Doremus Jessup! Of all the conscientious, respectable, lazy-minded Doremus Jessups, who have let the demogogues wriggle in, without fierce enough protest." 14 — Sinclair Lewis

We are taking the time to consider the Hungarian case for a simple reason: to show that constitutional limits on a central government's power do not by themselves necessarily produce political accountability. The "freedom" sought by the Hungarian noble class was the freedom to exploit their own peasants more thoroughly, and the absence of a strong central state allowed them to do just that. Everyone understands the Chinese form of tyranny, one perpetrated by a centralized dictatorship. But tyranny can result from decentralized oligarchic domination as well. True freedom tends to emerge in the interstices of a balance of power among a society's elite actors, something that Hungary never succeeded in achieving. — Francis Fukuyama

Faith and force ... are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny. — Ayn Rand

An old Russian proverb . . . "Where hangs the smoke of hate burns a fiercer fire called fear."
The trick . . . was to keep that fire alive, but to know at the same time it might consume you also. Then the truck was to make the fear invisible in the smokes of hatred. Having accomplished that, you would own men's souls and your power would be absolute, so long as you never allowed men to see that their hate was but fear, and so long as you, afraid, knowing it, hence more shrewd and cautious than the rest, did not become a corpse at the hands of the hating fearful.
There, in a nutshell, was the recipe for dictatorship. Over the proletariat. Over the godly believers. Over the heathen. Over all men, even those who imagined they were free and yet could be made to hate.
Frighten; then furnish the whipping boys. Then seize. — Philip Wylie

[D]emocracy can itself be as tyrannical as a dictatorship, since it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom.
-William F Buckley — William F. Buckley Jr.

Law without reason is criminal. — Criss Jami

Our forefathers were heroes. But why were they heroes? Because they fought for democracy. They fought for the life and liberty of the Filipino people. They fought for our independence, our freedom. They fought against tyranny, totalitarianism, and dictatorship. They fought for us and that is something we must be grateful for. — Yanan Melo

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty. — John Kennedy Toole

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