Quotes & Sayings About Tyrants

Why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away? — Benjamin Martin

By "trampling upon the helpless abroad" with unchecked surveillance, Americans have learned, "by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home." — Mark Twain

Tyrants are willing to commit to anything ... including mass murder to maintain their domination over every human being alive. They abuse the lives of the people they are entrusted with by the perverse dictates that they, themselves, would never live by. And they feel justified in this by their own self-righteous elite morality, which sets them high above everyone else in their own minds.
You and I, however, are made of quite different stuff. Our words are filled with our true beliefs and backed by the honesty of our actions. We take great pride in not only who we are ... but overcoming the struggle it took to make us this way. We are men and women of character ... principles ... and courage! — R.G. Risch

A tyrant is the worst disease, and the cause of all others. — William Blake

Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on. — James Russell Lowell

In this, our age of infamy Man's choice is but to be A tyrant, traitor, prisoner: No other choice has he. — Alexander Pushkin

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

Against the persecution of a tyrant the godly have no remedy but prayer. — John Calvin

I don't know what's wrong with this world, but I do know what's right with it: Love. I have studied enough history to see that no matter how cruel the behavior of tyrants and no matter how dark the moments have been, Love has always prevailed. Always. — Steve Maraboli

For tyrants, the lesson of the Reichstag fire is that one moment of shock enables an eternity of submission. For us, the lesson is that our natural fear and grief must not enable the destruction of our institutions. — Timothy Snyder

A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough ... People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself. — Doris Lessing

When you stop a dictator, there are always risks. But there are greater risks in not stopping a dictator. — Margaret Thatcher

The Bible has, amazingly- no doubt with supernatural grace-survived its critics. The harder tyrants try to eliminate it and skeptics dismiss it, the better read it becomes. — Charles Colson

I've personally demanded that tyrants let their people go. I've tried to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, protect the elderly and infirm, and defend the needy from the aggressively greedy. I've led a blessed life. What a kick for a kid from the projects. — Gary Ackerman

Virtue cannot dwell with slaves, nor reign O'er those who cower to take a tyrant's yoke. — William C. Bryant

When dictators and tyrants seek to destroy the freedoms of men, their first target is the legal profession and through it the rule of law. — Leon Jaworski

When a man is just and firm in his purpose,
The citizens burning to approve a wrong
Or the frowning looks of a tyrant
Do not shake his fixed mind, nor the Southwind.
Wild lord of the uneasy Adriatic,
Nor the thunder in the mighty hand of Jove:
Should the heavens crack and tumble down,
As the ruins crushed him he would not fear. — Horace

If you want to be a leader whom people follow with absolute conviction, you have to be a likable leader. Tyrants and curmudgeons with brilliant vision can command a reluctant following for a time, but it never lasts. They burn people out before they ever get to see what anyone is truly capable of. — Travis Bradberry

The most encouraging trend of our time is the widespread loss of faith in government. No longer do people look to the government as the great problem solver, economic planner, social unifier, or cultural czar. The government is more likely to be seen for what it is, a haven for grafters, liars, and would-be tyrants. Americans, like the Russians, no longer believe anything until it is officially denied. — Llewellyn Rockwell

Throughout the history of mankind there have been murderers and tyrants; and while it may seem momentarily that they have the upper hand, they have always fallen. Always. — Mahatma Gandhi

Self-love is the love of a man's own self, and of everything else for his own sake. It makes people idolaters to themselves, and tyrants to all the world besides. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Despotic governments do not recognize the precious human component of the state, seeing its citizens only as a faceless, mindless
and helpless
mass to be manipulated at will. It is as though people were incidental to a nation rather than its very life-blood. — Aung San Suu Kyi

We always think we are right, and - search as I have - there is no evil under the sun that somebody somewhere won't argue is actually a good, no idiocy that hasn't got its perfectly serious defenders, and no tyrant, past or present - no matter how bloody - without some bunch of zealot schmucks to defend him or his reputation till the last breath in their bodies - or preferably somebody else's. — Clive Barker

Necessity is the plea for every infringement on human rights. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. — William Pitt The Younger

Laugh at tyrants and the tragedy they inflict. Such men welcome our tears as evidence of subservience, but our laughter condemns them to ignominy. — Dean Koontz

Are you from Hapsburg?"
He seemed to think about it for a second or two, then gave a small nod.
"I thought I recognized the accent."
The scowl was back full force. "You are an expert on accents?" He managed to sound sarcastic.
"No. My Uncle Otto was from Hapsburg."
He blinked again, and the scowl wilted around the edges. "You are not German." He sounded very sure.
"My father's family is; from Baden-Baden on the edge of the Black Forest but Uncle Otto was from Hamburg.
"You said only your uncle had the accent."
"By the time I came along, most of the family, except for my grandmother, had been in this country so long there was no accent, but Uncle Otto never lost his."
"He's dead now." Olaf made it half question, half statement.
I nodded.
"How did he die?"
"Grandma Blake says Aunt Gertrude nagged him to death."
His lips twitched. "Women are tyrants if a man allows it." His voice was a touch softer now. — Laurell K. Hamilton

People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government ... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well — Charles W. Colson

Magna Carta is the Law: Let the King look out.So it has always been with tyrants among our own people: when the King was tyrant, let him look out. And it has always been the same, and will be the same, whether the tyrant be the Barons, whether the tyrant be the Church, whether he be demagogue or dictator - let them look out. — Stanley Baldwin

Whether or not patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, national security can be the last refuge of the tyrant. — Robert Walker, Baron Walker Of Gestingthorpe

My hips bristle with totems and talismans, proof that I am not simply a character in a fixed book or film. I am no single narrative. As neither Rebecca de Winter nor Jane Eyre, I am free to revise my story, to reinvent myself, my world, at any given moment. Advancing beside Archer, I am resplendent in my savage finery of seized power. In my service charge the collected blackguards of a dozen tyrants now dispatched to a lesser oblivion. My fingers, stained crimson with the blood of despots, are not the fingers which paged through the paper lives of helpless romantic heroines. No more am I a passive damsel who waits for circumstance to decide her fate; now have I become the scalawag, the swashbuckler, the Heathcliff of my dreams bent on rescuing myself. For now do I embody all the traits I had so hoped to find in Goran. Meaning: No longer am I limited. — Chuck Palahniuk

The right of revolution, which tyrants, in mockery, accord to mankind, is no legal right under a government; it is only a natural right to overturn a government. — Lysander Spooner

Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding. And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice are utterly erased from his mind. — Edmund Burke

People of Baghdad, remember for 26 generations you have suffered under strange tyrants who have ever endeavoured to set one Arab house against another in order that they might profit by your dissensions. This policy is abhorrent to Great Britain and her Allies for there can be neither peace nor prosperity where there is enmity or misgovernment. Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. — Frederick Stanley Maude

Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist. — Robert A. Heinlein

Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. And we have nuclear ********* weapons. — Ken MacLeod

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things, which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little. Many tyrants have sat on a throne, and those whom no man would think on, have worn crowns. — Jeff Wheeler

Time and again in this century, the political map of the world was transformed. And ineach instance a new world order came about through the advent of a new tyrant or the outbreak of a bloody global war, or its end. — George H. W. Bush

For the greater good." "That has been the excuse of tyrants throughout all time. — Brandon Sanderson

History has a long-range perspective. It ultimately passes stern judgment on tyrants and vindicates those who fought, suffered, were imprisoned, and died for human freedom, against political oppression and economic slavery. — Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Lycurgus, Numa, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, all these great rogues, all these great thought-tyrants, knew how to associate the divinities they fabricated with their own boundless ambition. — Marquis De Sade

Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God. — Benjamin Franklin

Intolerance of oppression, the desire to be free and develop one personality to its full limits, is not enough to make one an anarchist. That aspiration towards unlimited freedom, if not tempered by a love for mankind and by the desire that all should enjoy equal freedom, may well create rebels who soon become exploiters and tyrants. — Errico Malatesta

It is the lot of God's ministers not only to suffer opposition at the hand of a wicked world, but also to see the patient indoctrination of many years quickly undone by such religious fanatics. This hurts more than the persecution of tyrants. We are treated shabbily on the outside by tyrants, on the inside by those whom we have restored to the liberty of the Gospel, and also by false brethren. But this is our comfort and our glory, that being called of God we have the promise of everlasting life. We look for that reward which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man. — Martin Luther

But they don't use law-they use law for their interests. They don't go by law, international, federal, local-nothing! They go by whatever is expedient to protect the interests that are at stake. — Malcolm X

The tyrant claims freedom to kill freedom, and yet keep it for himself. — Rabindranath Tagore

Sovereignty cannot be a shield for tyrants to commit wanton murder, or an excuse for the international community to turn a blind eye to slaughter. — Barrack Obama

Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants. — Anatole France

An artist is the magician put among men to gratify
capriciously
their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships
and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes
husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer ... — Tom Stoppard

These words of yours, devoid of Christ, devoid of Spirit, are colder than ice itself, so that they tarnish the beauty of your eloquence. Perhaps they were dragged out of you, poor fellow, by fear of the pontiffs and tyrants, lest you should seem altogether an atheist! — Martin Luther

Insane! ... Ask the tyrant who is his most dangerous foe, the sane man or the insane? — Henry David Thoreau

A Tyrant is most tyrant to himselfe. — George Herbert

Love is a tyrant, resisted. — John Ford

There are no tyrants if there are no slaves — Jose Rizal

GDCC M. Wolf has a dehumanized approach to demand. Demand is not an animal. Manipulating it veers on totalitarianism. The natural order is that people demand - or, more precisely, desire - the product of their work. This natural - and beautiful - order can momentously be tampered with by well-meaning or not so well-meaning people. Needs can be decreed by tyrants, cravings can be artificially aroused by advertising gurus and affordability can be engineered by economists through debt. But the end result is alienation. Serf8973521 — Cathal Haughian

Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the "general welfare of the people." Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

They would be subject to no one, neither to lawful ruler nor to the reign of law, but would be altogether and absolutely free. That is the way they got their tyrants, for either servitude or freedom, when it goes to extremes, is an utter bane, while either in due measure is altogether a boon. — Plato

Let the warning of the tyrants of the past be recognized for it shall be the same one ringing out when the tyrants of the present are unleashed. — Sai Marie Johnson

Is it not He whose immortal hand ... has written there the death sentence of tyrants? He did not create kings to devour the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery and falsehood. He created the universe to proclaim His power.
[The Cult of the Supreme Being] — Maximilien De Robespierre

Whether you have an abortion, what you put in your own body, with whom you have sex - these are not the affairs of the state. A government does not exist to control the citizens. When it does, it is a tyranny, and must be fought. The tree of liberty, Jefferson warned us, must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots. — Gore Vidal

Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

I descended to the ocean floor and encountered bloated, symmetrical creatures with pumping white hearts and translucent skin. Collapsed blue civilizations lived down there, fissured and antiseptic, craggy with barnacles and blistering rust. I reached into the heart of the earth, the sky, the moon. I colonized language, mathematics, schemes of chemical order and atomic weight. I studied the manufacture of automobiles, microcircuitry, Kleenex and planets. I memorized the gross national products of nations and hemispheres, the populations of cities and states and principalities, the achievements of presidents, tyrants and kings. I was trying to learn what I suspect Mom had learned already: that there were journeys we all make alone that take us far away from one another. — Scott Bradfield

Recent school shootings have lured ill-informed Americans into a war on our Second Amendment guarantees, led by the nation's tyrants and their useful idiots ... The Second Amendment was given to us as protection against tyranny by the federal government and the Congress of the United States. — Walter E. Williams

Her husband was not malicious, but he did bully, though without anger or animosity, as do petty tyrants who think that giving orders means swearing. In front of any stranger he behaved himself, but in his family he let himself go and pretended to be terrible although he was really scared of everybody. — Guy De Maupassant

It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. — Patrick Henry

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them. — Voltaire

The worst tyrants are those which establish themselves in our own breasts. — William Ellery Channing

All the cops are just workers for the one percent, and they don't even realize they're being exploited. — Ray Lewis

There can be no freedom for Africa without justice; and no justice without declaring war on Africa's poverty, disease and famine with as much vehemence as we remove the tyrant and the terrorist. — Tony Blair

The tyrant now Trusts not to men: nightly within his chamber The watch-dog guards his couch, the only friend He now dare trust. — Joanna Baillie

We need to remember that the separation of church and state must never mean the separation of religious values from the lives of public servants ... If we who serve free men today are to differ from the tyrants of this age, we must balance the powers in our hands with God in our hearts. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Terrorism can be commendable, and it can be reprehensible. The terrorism we practice is of the commendable kind for it is directed at the tyrants and the aggressors and the enemies of Allah. — Osama Bin Laden

Better to live under one tyrant a thousand miles away, than a thousand tyrants one mile away. — Daniel Bliss

Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, And are but slightly impressed by kindness, Which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed upon easy going masters, but the tyrants who vigorously oppressed them. It is to these latter that they always erect the loftiest statues. It is true that they willingly trample on the despot whom they have stripped of his power, but it is because having lost his power he resumes his place among the feeble who are to be despised because they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to a crowd will always have the semblance of a Caesar, His insignia attract them, His authority overawes them, and his sword instils them with fear. — Gustave Le Bon

There is bound to be a certain amount of trouble running any country. If you are president, the trouble happens to you. But if you are a tyrant you can arrange things so that most of the trouble happens to other people. — Don Marquis

Therein, ye gods, ye make the weak most strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat.
Nor stony wall, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit:
But life being weary of these worldly bars
Never lacks power to dismiss itself. — William Shakespeare

If women were in charge of everything, there would be women tyrants. If black people were in charge, there would be black tyrants. If Hispanics were in charge, then Hispanic tyrants. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Muslims have been subjected to so many tyrants and oppressive regimes. That's what the Arab Spring was about, but the problem comes in trying to direct a revolution. — Cat Stevens

Clever tyrants are never punished. — Voltaire

According to historian Ellen Hammer, he (Pres. Kennedy) was, 'shaken and depressed.' to realize that, 'the first Catholic ever to become a Vietnamese chief of state was dead, assassinated as a direct result of a policy authorized by the first American Catholic president.' At one point an aide tried to console him by reminding him that Diem and Nhu had been tyrants.
'No," he replied. "They were in a difficult position.' They did the best they could for their country. — Stephen Kinzer

It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies. — Bertrand Russell

Pacifists become militants. Freedom fighters become tyrants. Blessings become curses. Help becomes hindrance. More becomes less. — Tim Ferriss

Verily, the index finger that testifies to the oneness of Allah Azzawajal in prayer, utterly rejects to write even an alphabet, endorsing the rule of the tyrant — Sayyid Qutb

The old tyrants invoked the past; the new tyrants will invoke the future evolution has produced the snail and the owl; evolution can produce a workman who wants no more space than a snail, and no more light than an owl. The employer need not mind sending a Kaffir to work underground; he will soon become an underground animal, like a mole. He need not mind sending a diver to hold his breath in the deep seas; he will soon be a deep-sea animal. Men need not trouble to alter conditions, conditions will so soon alter men. The head can be beaten small enough to fit the hat. Do not knock the fetters off the slave; knock the slave until he forgets the fetters. — G.K. Chesterton

Why do tyrants understand the dangers of a democratic imagination more than our policy makers appreciate its necessity? — Azar Nafisi

Excessive dealings with tyrants are not good for the security of free states. — Demosthenes

Fate is the friend of the good, the guide of the wise, the tyrant of the foolish, the enemy of the bad. — William Rounseville Alger

Neither can oath nor promise bind any such people to obey and maintain tyrants against God and against his truth known. — John Knox

Social and cultural change, however desirable, should not be effected by the engines of national power. Let us, through persuasion and education, seek to improve institutions we deem defective. But let us, in doing so, respect the orderly processes of the law. Any other course enthrones tyrants and dooms freedom. — Barry Goldwater

The people must remain ever vigilant against tyrants masquerading as public servants. — George Washington

The Socialists have found good the equality, and bad the inequality. Good the servants and bad the tyrants. I crossed the threshold of good and evil in order to live my life intensely. I live today and can not await tomorrow. The wait is of peoples and of humanity, so could not be my affair. — Renzo Novatore

In the context of 1948, 1984 seemed dreadfully convincing. But tyrants, after all, are mortal and circumstances change. Recent developments in Russia and recent advances in science and technology have robbed Orwell's book of some of its gruesome verisimilitude. A nuclear war will, of course, make nonsense of everybody's predictions. But, assuming for the moment that the Great Powers can somehow refrain from destroying us, we can say that it now looks as though the odds were more in favor of something like Brave New World than of something like 1984. — Aldous Huxley

In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal. — Camille Paglia

The tyrant is a child of pride. — Sophocles

A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport to Hell than a mere common tyrant or debauchee. — C.S. Lewis

Egalitarianism and karma are very attractive ideas to INFJs, and they tend to believe that nothing would help the world so much as using love and compassion to soften the hearts of tyrants. — Anonymous

Wretched men cringe before tyrants who have no power, the victims of their trivial hopes and fears. They do not realise that anger is hopeless, fear is pointless and desire all a delusion. He whose heart is fickle is not his own master, has thrown away his shield, deserted his post, and he forges the links of the chain that holds him. — Boethius

In America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them. — Gerry Spence

Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Where once a tyrant had to wish that his subjects had but one common neck that he might strangle them all at once, all he has to do now is to 'educate the people' so that they will have but one common mind to delude. — Richard Mitchell

Diplomats and politicians, blowing with the wind. No substance, no beliefs, no real friendships. — Andrew Crofts