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
What, in short, is the whole system of Europe towards America but an atrocious and insulting tyranny? One hemisphere of the earth, separated from the other by wide seas on both sides, having a different system of interests flowing from different climates, different soils, different productions, different modes of existence, and its own legal relations and duties, is made subservient to all the petty interests of the other, to their laws, their regulations, their passions and wars, and interdicted from social intercourse, from the interchange of mutual duties and comforts with their neighbors, enjoined on all men by the laws of nature. Happily these abuses of human rights are drawing to a close on both our continents, and are not likely to survive the present mad contest of the lions and tigers of the other.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Clement Caine, September 16, 1811
Consider those grand agents and lieutenants of the devil, by whom he scourges and plagues the world under him, to-wit, tyrants; and was there ever any tyrant who was not also false and perfidious?
ROBERT SOUTH
Twelve Sermons
Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.
CHARLES PEGUY
Oeuvres en prose
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
It is easier to repress the advances of tyranny at first, than to destroy it when once established.
SOLON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Stability born of tyranny is a false stability.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
"The moral and practical case for democracy promotion", FOX News, May 9, 2017
Of all the tyrannies on human kind
The worst is that which persecutes the mind.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Hind and the Panther
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 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
A company of tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions.
VOLTAIRE
Dictionnaire philosophique
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
In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
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
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
A tyrant has the least respect for one whom he can conquer.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Clever tyrants are never punished; they have always some slight shade of virtue: they support the laws before destroying them.
VOLTAIRE
Mérope
Tyranny produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in those two great types of the slave in classical times -- Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, the other meekness with its Christian graces.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
How terrible is the pain of the mind and heart when the freedom of mankind is suppressed!
E. A. BUCCHIANERI
Brushstrokes of a Gadfly