Tyrannical Quotes & Sayings

The inflamed sensitivity induced by radicalized democratic theory finally experiences any limit as arbitrary and tyrannical. There are no absolutes; freedom is absolute. Of course the result is that, on the one hand, the argument justifying freedom disappears and, on the other, all beliefs begin to have the attenuated character that was initially supposed to be limited to religious belief. — Allan Bloom

Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all. — Maximilien Robespierre

It was not that she was a better-tempered person, she decided detachedly. It was that her anger had learned a terrible patience. What good was wasting words on a petty and tyrannical second mate? He was a little yapping dog. She was a tigress. One did not waste snarls on such a creature. One waited until one could snap his spine with a single blow. — Robin Hobb

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. — Thomas Jefferson

Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical influence: Hence, the advantages it brings are turned all too soon into disadvantages. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The rule of law constitutes a basic protection of individuals against tyrannical government. But in the second half of the twentieth century, law lost its focus as a constraint on government and became instead an instrument for widening the scope of government. — Francis Fukuyama

The founders also knew that every government system risks corruption, and they wanted to make sure Americans would be able to defend themselves should the nation's leaders become tyrannical. To that end, they ratified the Second Amendment, guaranteeing the right of Americans to bear arms. An armed populace is a powerful deterrent to tyrants both domestically and internationally, and we must defend this liberty as part of our common defense. — Ben Carson

In general, literature is a natural adversary of totalitarianism. Tyrannical governments all view literature in the same way: as their enemy. I lived for a long time in a totalitarian state, and I know firsthand that horror. — Ismail Kadare

There are so many different forms of silence: the silence that tyrannical states force on their citizens, stealing their memories, rewriting their histories, and imposing on them a state-sanctioned identity. Or the silence of witnesses who choose to ignore or not speak the truth, and of victims who at times become complicit in the crimes committed against them. Then there are the silences we indulge in about ourselves, our personal mythologies, the stories we impose upon our real lives. — Azar Nafisi

The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, was meant to inhibit only the federal government, not the states. The framers, as The Federalist Papers attest (see No. 28), saw the state militias as forces that might be summoned into action against the federal government itself, if it became tyrannical. — Joseph Sobran

There were endless stories locked into the silent, cool mass of the Wall, so many memories of stories of so long ago, now only to be imagined. What an incredible feat of human imagination and engineering. A real tribute to visionary and tenacious (if tyrannical) leaders who held a nation together with a common goal, from dynasty to dynasty over the many centuries. — Braam Malherbe

I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could ... that your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of master for the more tender and endearing one of friend. — Abigail Adams

The sacralization of the party opened the way to the sacralization of Stalin when he became the supreme leader. After 1929, the political religion of Russia mainly concentrated on the deification of Stalin, who until his death in 1953 dominated the party and Soviet system like a tyrannical and merciless deity. — Emilio Gentile

We have been living amidst one of the great revolutions of human history, and we hardly know it: the penetration of the State into every aspect of human life and society. Some people regard this as good and "progressive," others regard it as tyrannical; but either way, it's a fact, a transformation as great as, say, the Industrial Revolution. Absolutely nothing is now beyond the scope of State power. — Joseph Sobran

When a parliamentary or social majority decrees that it is legal, at least under certain conditions, to kill unborn human life, is it not really making a tyrannical decision with regard to the weakest and most defenseless of human beings? ... While public authority can sometimes choose not to put a stop to something which were it prohibited would cause more serious harm, it can never presume to legitimize as a right of individuals even if they are the majority of the members of society an offense against other persons caused by the disregard of so fundamental a right as the right to life. — Pope John Paul II

If it be true that the world has lost its respect for authority, it is only because it lost it first in the home. By a peculiar paradox, as the home loses its authority, the authority of the state becomes tyrannical. — Fulton J. Sheen

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true too ... she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny ... The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist. — E.B. White

I am the Penitent God. And tonight, I have begun my battle. My siege. The hundred-thousand Ink-borne arrows, flying forth from my flaming pen, to assault the walls of tyrannical Cold that hold this man in awful rapture. My campaign for my friend's very soul. My war of Ice, Ink, and Ember. — S.G. Night

Then who is more miserable? One of whom I am about to speak. Who is that? He who is of a tyrannical nature, and instead of leading a private life has been cursed with the further misfortune of being a public tyrant. From — Plato

Environmental degradation is one of the biggest challenges we have. I think a question that we're not asking ourselves is: 'Isn't humanity committing suicide with this indiscriminate and tyrannical use of nature?' — Pope Francis

Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest. — W. H. Auden

For the Christian there can be no social or political panaceas, no easy escapes from personal responsibility achieved by collectivising guilt or virtue. The true ends of temporal life lie beyond it, and, though the tyrannical State may diminish virtue, the benevolent State cannot procure it. — Margaret Thatcher

Non-violence is backed by the theory of soul-force in which suffering is courted in the hope of ultimately winning over the opponent. But what happens when such an attempt fail to achieve the object? It is here that soul-force has to be combined with physical force so as not to remain at the mercy of tyrannical and ruthless enemy. — Bhagat Singh

Growing up in Pakistan in the 1980s, I lived in the shadow of a tyrannical state. — Mohsin Hamid

Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion.But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began. — Emma Goldman

Lack of personal morality plus "politically correct" prohibition against judging others' behavior and naming immorality sets up a social environment receptive and vulnerable to a tyrannical government. A tyrannical government transforms every aspect of the cultural day-to-day lives of everyone under its control across all areas from the educational and penal systems to fine art and entertainment dictates right on down to housing regulations and food availabilities. — Alexandra York

Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged. — Herman Melville

The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical. — Henry George

The danger is one which democracy by itself does not suffice to avert. A democracy in which the majority exercises its power without restraint may be almost as tyrannical as a dictatorship. Toleration of minorities is an essential part of wise democracy, but a part which is not always sufficiently remembered. — Bertrand Russell

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars: It is better to be here [in Europe] ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent. — Ronald Reagan

For those who have little are not equally held in subjection by their possessions as those who overflow with affluence, for then the love of it becomes more tyrannical. The increase of acquisitions kindles the flame more, and renders those who possess them poorer. — John Chrysostom

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical. — Blaise Pascal

When the history of the 20th century is finally written, one of its key features will be the wanton slaughter of more than 170 million people, not in war, but by their own government. The governments that led in this slaughter are the former USSR (65 million) and the Peoples Republic of China (35-40 million). The point to remember is that these governments were the idols of America's leftists. Part of the reason for these and other tyrannical successes was because the people were first disarmed. — Walter E. Williams

The rule of law does not guarantee freedom, since general law as well as personal edicts can be tyrannical. But increasing reliance on the rule of law clearly played a major role in transforming Western society from a world in which the ordinary citizen was literally subject to the arbitrary will of his master to a world in which the ordinary citizen could regard himself as his own master — Milton Friedman

Just as terror, even in its pre-total, merely tyrannical form ruins all relationships between men, so the self-compulsion of ideological thinking ruins all relationships with reality. The preparation has succeeded when people have lost contact with their fellow men as well as the reality around them; for together with these contacts, men lose the capacity of both experience and thought. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist. — Hannah Arendt

My war - and I have yet to win a decisive battle - is with the modes of thought and conditioned feelings that prevail in psychology and therefore also in the way we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions that clamp the mind and heart into positivistic science (geneticism and computerism), economics (bottom-line capitalism), and single-minded faith (fundamentalism). — James Hillman

Higgins: I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical. Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and youre driving at another.
Pickering: At what, for example?
Higgins: Oh, Lord knows! I suppose the woman wants to live her own life; and the man wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other on to the wrong track. One wants to go north and the other south; and the result is that both have to go east, though they both hate the east wind. — George Bernard Shaw

To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse, 10 times as ignorant, 10 times as unfair and tyrannical, 10 times as complaisant and pusillanimous, and 10 times as devious, hypocritical, disingenuous, deceitful, pharisaical, Pecksniffian, fraudulent, slippery, unscrupulous, perfidious, lewd and dishonest. — H.L. Mencken

For one of the first pressures that bear down on American girls is the pressure not only to be liked but to be like everyone else. This initial feat of self-transformation often involves loosening one's grip on that quiet sense of inner self and hitching one's wagon to a single standard of beauty. The stress of leaping through that hoop insinuates itself into the young heart and soul with a vengeance, and insecurities go from being hard little buds of confusion to overripe, snarled and tyrannical fruits that hang on the vine as we age. — Debra Ollivier

Nothing like an arcane literary debate with your tyrannical master while you pass the time leading to your execution. — Elizabeth Wein

The urge to leap across feminism to "human liberation" is a tragic and dangerous mistake. It deflects us from our real sources of vision, recycles us back into old definitions and structures, and continues to serve the purposes of the patriarchy, which will use "women's lib," as it contemptuously phrases it, only to buy more time for itself - as both capitalism and socialism are now doing. Feminism is a criticism and subversion of all patriarchal thought and institutions - not merely those currently seen as reactionary and tyrannical. — Adrienne Rich

And it isn't only that I don't believe it. I can't. "I can't believe it because my reason tells me that such a system, in which anyone dictates our every move - be it a god, or a devil, or our subconscious mind, or our tyrannical genesis simply impossible. "Life itself must be founded upon the infinite possibility for choice and accident. And if we cannot prove that it is, we must believe that it is. We must believe that we can change, that we can control, that we can direct our own destinies. — Anne Rice

It is the prospect of being close to you that makes marriage partly attractive. I can imagine the equality which we would then enjoy, it would mean more to you than any other type of equality, and be more beautiful. I could be a son who was freer, more thankful, less guilty, and more upright; you could be a father who was less troubled, less tyrannical, more sympathetic, and more content. But to reach this point all that has happened would need to be undone; so we would need to be abolished. But we are as we are, and marriage is your domain and so it is forbidden to me. At times I imagine the map of the world laid out and you stretched across it. And all that is left for my life are the areas you don't cover or can't reach. And because I see you as a giant, my territory is miserable and small and doesn't include marriage. I — Franz Kafka

Don't worry, he's coming with me to investigate things."
"In the city?" Jim asked.
"Yes."
"That's a great idea. You both should go. To the city."
Curran and I looked at each other.
"He's trying to get rid of us," I said.
"You think he's planning a coup?" Curran wondered.
"I hope so." I turned to Jim. "Is there any chance you'd overthrow the tyrannical Beast Lord and his psychotic Consort?"
"Yeah, I want a vacation," Curran said.
Jim leaned toward us and said in a lowered voice, "You couldn't pay me enough. This is your mess, you deal with it. I have enough on my plate."
He walked away.
"Too bad," Curran said.
"I don't know, I think we could convince him to seize the reins of power."
Curran shook his head. "Nahh. He's too smart for that. — Ilona Andrews

The viscountess had raised the forefinger of her right hand and made a pretty gesture toward a stool at her feet. There was such intense tyrannical passion in the gesture that the marquis relinquished the doorknob and came back. — Honore De Balzac

If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify. — Alexander Hamilton

Perhaps most surprising of all, the deposed and imprisoned King Henry was not murdered. This had been the fate of the two Plantagenet kings who had lost their crowns before him: Edward II died while in custody at Berkeley Castle in 1327, while Richard II was killed at Pontefract in 1400, the year following his deposition. Ironically, Henry's survival was perhaps a mark of his uniquely pitiful and ineffectual approach to kingship - for it was much harder to justify killing a man who had done nothing evil or tyrannical, but had earned his fate thanks to his dewy-eyed simplicity. Permitting Henry to remain alive was a bold decision that Edward IV would come to regret. But in 1465 it must have struck the king as a brave and magnanimous act. — Dan Jones

But I was immobilized - less by another's static imposition than by my own static will. For the enemy had in thrall my power to choose, which he had used to make a chain for binding me. From bad choices an urge arises; and the urge, yielded to, becomes a compulsion; and the compulsion, unresisted, becomes a slavery - each link in this process connected with the others, which is why I call it a chain - and that chain had a tyrannical grip around me. The new will I felt stirring in me, a will to 'give you free worship' and enjoy what I yearned for, my God, my only reliable happiness, could not break away from the will made strong by long dominance. Two wills were mine, old and new, of the flesh, of the spirit, each warring on the other, and between their dissonances was my soul disintegrating. — Augustine Of Hippo

Politics doesn't align with emotions. An emotional politician is most likely to be a tyrannical leader. — Henry Johnson Jr

Anorexia was my attempt to have control over my body and manipulate my body and starve my body and shape my body. It was not a very good relationship. It was the sort of relationship my father had to my body. It was a tyrannical, "you'll do what I tell you" relationship. — Eve Ensler

As every artist who has used the method knows - photography's a loyal slave and a tyrannical master. — Robert Genn

Tourist trips to Cuba are being abused. They are tourist trips that are providing hard currency for a dictatorial, tyrannical regime to get hard currency that it uses to oppress its people. And that's why these trips need to be carefully scrutinized. — Marco Rubio

One essential of a free government is that it rest wholly on voluntary support. And one certain proof that a government is not free, is that it coerces more or less persons to support it, against their will. All governments, the worst on earth, and the most tyrannical on earth, are free governments to that portion of the people who voluntarily support them. And all governments - though the best on earth in other respects - are nevertheless tyrannies to that portion of the people - whether few or many - who are compelled to support them against their will. A government is like a church, or any other institution, in these respects. There is no other criterion whatever, by which to determine whether a government is a free one, or not, than the single one of its depending, or not depending, solely on voluntary support. — Lysander Spooner

Love is needed to strengthen the weak; love becomes tyrannical when it exacts obedience from an unbeliever. — Mahatma Gandhi

If we know one thing from experience it is that oppression does not crush rebellion, no matter how it tries,' I told him. 'It breeds it anew with every tyrannical act. — Isobelle Carmody

rape of a woman. One of the sons of Rome's tyrannical king ravished Lucretia, a pure young wife. She told her husband and her father of this, — Phyllis T. Smith

As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The American attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both. — Chalmers Johnson

I will say this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religous. Nothing could divert them from the regular and faithful performace of the pieties enjoined b ythe Church — Mark Twain

The biographies of great artists make it abundantly clear that the creative urge is often so imperious that it battens on their humanity and yokes everything to the service of the work, even at the cost of health and ordinary human happiness. The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the personal fate of the man who is its vehicle. — Carl Jung

Freedom is not won by merely overthrowing a tyrannical ruler or an oppressive regime. That is usually only the prelude to a new tyranny, a new oppression. — Jonathan Sacks

There's an arrest warrant out for her. Did you even consider taking her to the Commander?"
"No."
"Why not?" Valek didn't try to hide his disbelief. "Killing isn't the only solution to a problem. Or has that been yourformula?"
" My formula! Excuse me, Mr. Assassin, while I laugh as I remember my history lessons on how to deal with a tyrannical monarch by killing him and his family."
Valek flashed me a dangerous look. — Maria V. Snyder

When you enslave a black man, you enslave yourself as well, for now you are bound to him as surely as he is bound to you, and your character is shaped by his bondage as surely as his own is. Make the black man servile, and in the same process you make yourself tyrannical. Make the black man quiver in fear before you, and you make yourself a monster of terror. — Robert Silverberg

CHILDHOOD I That idol, black eyes and yellow mop, without parents or court, nobler than Mexican and Flemish fables; his domain, insolent azure and verdure, runs over beaches called by the shipless waves, names ferociously Greek, Slav, Celt. At the border of the forest - dream flowers tinkle, flash, and flare, - the girl with orange lips, knees crossed in the clear flood that gushes from the fields, nakedness shaded, traversed, dressed by rainbow, flora, sea. Ladies who stroll on terraces adjacent to the sea; baby girls and giantesses, superb blacks in the verdigris moss, jewels upright on the rich ground of groves and little thawed gardens, - young mothers and big sisters with eyes full of pilgrimages, sultanas, princesses tyrannical of costume and carriage, little foreign misses and young ladies gently unhappy. What boredom, the hour of the "dear body" and "dear heart." II — Arthur Rimbaud

Intellectual and cultural freedom is the most important single precondition for the breakdown of the kinds of tyrannical and totalitarian systems that periodically threaten us. — James H. Billington

They are the typical product of the structure of the German Lager: if one offers a position of privilege to a few individuals in a state of slavery, exacting in exchange the betrayal of a natural solidarity with their
comrades, there will certainly be someone who will accept. He will be withdrawn from the common law and will become untouchable; the more power that he is given, the more he will be consequently hateful and
hated. When he is given the command of a group of unfortunates, with the right of life or death over them, he will be cruel and tyrannical, because he will understand that if he is not sufficiently so, someone else, judged more suitable, will take over his post.
Moreover, his capacity for hatred, unfulfilled in the direction of the oppressors, will double back, beyond all reason, on the oppressed; and he will only be satisfied when he has unloaded onto his underlings the injury received from above. — Primo Levi

The scum of the People are most Tyrannical when they get the Power, and treat their Betters with the greatest Insolence. — Mary Astell

A sense of contentment makes us kindly and benevolent to others; we are not chafed and galled by cares which are tyrannical because original. We are fulfilling our proper destiny, and those around us feel the sunshine of our own hearts. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

The people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel, as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power. The majority has eternally, and without one exception, usurped over the rights of the minority. — John Adams

Singling out political opponents for working against the ruling party is precisely the tactic of every tyrannical government from Red China to Venezuela. The first step in the process is creating unfounded public suspicion of political opponents, followed by arresting and jailing any who continue speaking against the regime. — John Carter

Yes, from drinking too much beer and generally being a tyrannical egomaniac. — Sarah Dalton

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; ... even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern ... — Thomas Jefferson

We believe in honesty, morality, and purity; but when they enact tyrannical laws, forbidding us the free exercise of our religion, we cannot submit. God is greater than the United States, and when the Government conflicts with heaven, we will be ranged under the banner of heaven and against the Government ... Polygamy is a divine institution. It has been banded down direct from God. The United States cannot abolish it. No nation on the earth can prevent it, nor all the nations of the earth combined ... I defy the United States; I will obey God. — John Taylor

The computer has evolved into a partner, a tool, and an environment
not just in science fiction, but in the public consciousness as well. Computers are no longer malevolent iron brains that manufacture tyrannical and oppressive answers; they are not a way to think, they are a place from which to think. The computer is an environment in which answers can be sought, created, manipulated and developed. — David Gerrold

The inner censor of the mind of the true believer completes the work of the public censor; his self-discipline is as tyrannical as the obedience imposed by the regime; he terrorizes his own conscience into submission;he carries his private Iron Curtain inside his skull, to protect his illusions against the intrusion of reality. — Arthur Koestler

My personal credo as a libertarian conservative: I think all attempts to reform your fellow-citizens or tell them how to live their lives are arrogant and tyrannical. THAT'S why I oppose Leftism. I want people to be free to manage their own lives. Reform is just authoritarianism. People are not playthings for anybody's theories or obsessions. — John Ray

Unfortunately, writing and reporting the truth is not allowed under Castro's tyrannical dictatorship. — Lincoln Diaz-Balart

The system that existed in Germany at that time tragically prevented the people from protecting themselves from tyrannical government. This is a system many people vehemently want to impose in America. — Ron Paul

I think forcing people to uncover their head is as tyrannical as forcing them to cover it. — Mustafa Akyol

I think the adverb is a much-maligned part of speech. It's always accused of being oppressive, even tyrannical, when in fact it's so supple and sly. — Eleanor Catton

No human government has a right to enquire into private opinions, to presume that it knows them, or to act on that presumption. Men are the best judges of the consequences of their own opinions, and how far they are likely to influence their actions; and it is most unnatural and tyrannical to say, "as you think, so must you act. I will collect the evidence of your future conduct from what I know to be your opinions." — Charles James Fox

As a single parent, I had become tyrannical in order to survive, and anything I couldn't control caused me enormous anxiety. As a naturally untidy, disorganised man who never made lists or kept receipts, morphing into someone who could take care of a toddler on his own may have caused me to overcompensate a little. — Simon Van Booy

Legislatures have no right to set up an inquisition and examine into the private opinions of men. Test-laws are useless and ineffectual, unjust and tyrannical. — Oliver Ellsworth

There are lots of women who are attracted to tyrannical men. Like moths to a flame. And there are some women who do not need a hero or even a stormy lover but a friend. Just remember that when you grow up. Steer clear of the tryant lovers, and try to locate the ones who are looking for a man as a friend, not because they are feeling empty themselves but because they enjoy making you full too. And remember that friendship between a woman and a man is something much more precious and rare than love: love is actually something quite gross and even clumsy compared to friendship. Friendship includes a measure of sensitivity, attentiveness, generosity, and a finely tuned sense of moderation. — Amos Oz

The capital of the United States is the home to the best of the worst humanity has to offer. The most corrupt, the most deceitful, the most tyrannical, the most greedy, and the most evil rise through the ranks of the political machines and eventually find themselves safely in bed participating in the incestuous orgy of corruption occurring daily in Washington, DC. — Justin King

The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors. — Gary Hamel

When the Islamic revolution began in 1979 under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, it aroused considerable admiration in the Arab street. It presented a model of organised popular action that deposed one of the region's most tyrannical regimes. The people of the region discerned in this revolution new hope for freedom and change. — Wadah Khanfar

Indira Gandhi had been this very powerful, dominating, ambiguous mother figure. Ambiguous because she was tyrannical, she had imposed ... she had suspended Indian democracy for a few years but she also was the woman who had defeated Pakistan in war at a time when most male politicians in India had secretly feared fighting that war, so that here in India even today Indira Gandhi is called by Indian nationalists the only man ever to have governed India. — Aravind Adiga

The monk, the inquisitor, and the Jesuit were lords of Spain,- sovereigns of her sovereign, for they had formed the dark and narrow mind of that tyrannical recluse. They had formed the minds of her people, quenched in blood every spark of rising heresy, and given over a noble nation to a bigotry blind and inexorable as the doom of fate. Linked with pride, ambition, avarice, every passion of a rich, strong nature, potent for good and ill, it made the Spaniard of that day a scourge as dire as ever fell on man. — Francis Parkman

According to the thesaurus... and according to me... there are over thirty different meanings and substitutions for
the word
mean.
(I quickly yell the following words; the entire class flinches- including Will)
Jackass, jerk, cruel, dickhead, unkind, harsh, wicked,
hateful, heartless, vicious, virulent, unrelenting, tyrannical, malevolent, atrocious, bastard, barbarous, bitter, brutal, callous, degenerate, brutish, depraved, evil, fierce, hard, implacable, rancorous, pernicious, inhumane, monstrous, merciless, inexorable.
And my personal favorite - asshole. — Colleen Hoover

There are, however, some potentates I would kill by any and all means at my disposal. They are Ignorance, Superstition, and Bigotry - the most sinister and tyrannical rulers on earth. — Emma Goldman

[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.

In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty. — William Blackstone

Be wary of friends - they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them. — Robert Greene

[With my photographs] you have a [single, forever fixed] moment and my particular angle of vision. My tyrannical condition, as it were, is that I prescribe your vision. — Thomas Demand

You can see where it's going. The extraordinary political apathy that followed Watergate and Vietnam and the institutionalization of grass-roots rebellion among minorities will only deepen. Politics is about consensus, and the advertising legacy of the sixties is that consensus is repression. Voting'll be unhip: Americans now vote with their wallets. Government's only cultural role will be as the tyrannical parent we both hate and need. Look for us to elect someone who can cast himself as a Rebel, maybe even a cowboy, but who deep down we'll know is a bureaucratic creature who'll operate inside the government mechanism instead of naively bang his head against it the way we've watched poor Jimmy do for four years. — David Foster Wallace

I felt in him what women feel in men, something so tender, swollen, tyrannical, absurd; I would never take the consequences of interfering with it. — Alice Munro

Believe that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind, - that everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and serpentine in man, serves as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite — Friedrich Nietzsche

The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition, or success or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes, instead that the object of life is Love. He knows that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love ever can reign in this world of sorrows; and he know that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt. He has learnt that Love is the source of all being, and that Hell itself is ordained by Love. He understands that Death, when we have finished the part that was assigned to us, is the reward of Love. And he apprehends the truth that the greatest happiness ever granted to a man is the privilege of being happy in the hour of his death. — Russell Kirk

Even worse, greedy bosses might curtail the workers' freedom of movement through debt peonage or slavery. At the end of the Middle Ages, slavery was almost unknown in Christian Europe. During the early modern period, the rise of European capitalism went hand in hand with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. Unrestrained market forces, rather than tyrannical kings or racist ideologues, were responsible for this calamity. — Yuval Noah Harari