quotations about tyrants and tyranny
A cruel reign is disordered and hidden in darkness, and while all shake with terror at the sudden explosions, not even he who caused all this disturbance escapes unharmed.
SENECA
"On Clemency", Minor Dialogues: Together with the Dialogue on Clemency
God Himself has no right to be a tyrant.
WILLIAM GODWIN
Sketches of History
One submits to tyranny when one renounces the difference between what one wants to hear and what is actually the case.
MICHAEL BRIGUGLIO
"How is a tyrant identified?", Times of Malta, May 1, 2017
Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.
CHARLES PEGUY
Oeuvres en prose
How terrible is the pain of the mind and heart when the freedom of mankind is suppressed!
E. A. BUCCHIANERI
Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
It is easier to repress the advances of tyranny at first, than to destroy it when once established.
SOLON
attributed, Day's Collacon
The fundamental article of my political creed is, that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor; equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 13, 1815
Tyrants are rebels against the first laws of heaven and society: to oppose their ravages is an instinct of nature, the inspiration of God in the heart of man.
JOSIAH QUINCY
Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy
It is better to have one tyrant than a hundred; one may demand two-thirds of all you possess; the hundred will pick you to the bone.
THEODORE DWIGHT
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is right to destroy a tyrant, and sacrifice self, if it saves the country and rids the world of a monster.
CHARLOTTE CORDAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
Tyrants in the course of time must eventually be overthrown because of the continual opposition of the oppressed. It is an unchanging Law, a constant rule, the penalty is certain, albeit that it is very slow coming to fruition.
FRANCESCO MARIO PAGANO
Saggi Politici
Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny.... They're organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
Clever tyrants are never punished; they have always some slight shade of virtue: they support the laws before destroying them.
VOLTAIRE
Mérope
Of all the tyrannies on human kind
The worst is that which persecutes the mind.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Hind and the Panther
A company of tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions.
VOLTAIRE
Dictionnaire philosophique
In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
Stability born of tyranny is a false stability.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
"The moral and practical case for democracy promotion", FOX News, May 9, 2017
Is there no tyrant but the crowned one?
JOSEPH CHENIER
Caius Gracchus
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
letter, November 11, 1937