Quotes about Tyranny

Despots can hide behind the word democracy, they can hide behind rigged elections, but they can't hide behind the actions they take that limit liberty. It's all about the liberty thing...not the democracy thing. If liberty is being devalued, limited, decreased or otherwise compromised then we have to scrutinize the leadership for what they are doing. Bottom line, those who limit liberty are no friends to freedom.

The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.  James Dresden

As William Penn put it: "Those people who are not governed by God will be ruled by tyrants." Remember... that those tyrants are often self-imposed roadblocks of your lower self at work.

What will people say--in these words lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the oblique vision of our minds. These four words hold sway everywhere.

The "Terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years.

No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fi fty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

Money power cannot be separated from democratic power without miscarriage and ensuing frustration - political and economic. Democracy implies the sovereignty of man; and, since man cannot be sovereign without the money power, there can not be democracy under the political money system.

Now since all tyrannies are based on dogmas, that is, on fundamental statements of absolute fact, and since all dogmas are based on lies, it behooves us first to seek for truth, and freedom will not be far away.  And the truth is that we know nothing.
Objectively, we know nothing at all.  Any system of intellectual thought, whether it be science, logic, religion, or philosophy, is based on certain fundamental ideas or axioms which are assumed, but which cannot be proved.  This is the grave of all positivism.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.

Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.

Son of man, keep not silent, forget not deeds of tyranny. Cry out at the disaster of a people, recount it unto your children and they unto theirs. From generation to generation the hordes swept in, ran wild and savage and there was no deliverance, valiance, and revolt. How the mighty are fallen, the great in spirit and stout of heart, walking to their death with a halo of eternity. (reference to the Holocaust)

The V sign is the symbol of the unconquerable will of the occupied territories, and a portent of the fate awaiting the Nazi tyranny.

. . . You ask, What is our policy? I will say; It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory - victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it; and this I know, my lords: that where laws end, tyranny begins.

Where law ends tyranny begins.

Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave.

The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend. It is one of the great landmarks in man's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.

Of all tyrannies a country can suffer, the worst is the tyranny of the majority.

Violence ever defeats its own ends. Where you cannot drive you can always persuade. A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles. There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.

Peace without justice is tyranny.

When citizens fear government, we call it tyranny When government fears citizens, we call it freedom

The morning sun rises to greet him, and in its low, warm light he stands like some sort of pagan god, or deposed tyrant, staring out over the city he's sworn to... stare out over. And it's evident, just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind.

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the Old World is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe, Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her as a stranger and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we may obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: 't is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods. It would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but "to bind us in all cases whatsoever," and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious, for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.