Despotism Quotes - Page 9

• There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  History, Anecdotes, Attention

  Sébastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1902). “The Cynic's Breviary: Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort”

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• Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings.

  Raymond Aron

  Party, Practice, Names

  Raymond Aron (2011). “The Opium of the Intellectuals”, p.97, Transaction Publishers

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• He asks how the evil is to be remedied. I tell him that there seems to be little chance for avoiding the extremes of despotism or anarchy; that the only ground of hope must be the morals of the people, but that these are, I fear, too corrupt.

  Gouverneur Morris

  People, Evil, Littles

  Gouverneur Morris (1888). “The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris: Minister of the United States to France ... Etc”

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• I earnestly pray that the Omnipotent Being who has not deserted the cause of America in the hour of its extremest hazard, will never yield so fair a heritage of freedom a prey to 'Anarchy' or 'Despotism'.

  George Washington

  Yield, America, Hazards

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1835). “The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private”, p.406

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• Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all of the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

  Frederick Douglass

  Practice, America, Hypocrisy

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

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• Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?

  George W. Bush

  Children, Men, Choices

  National Endowment for Democracy Address on the Middle East, delivered 6 November 2003, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C.

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• Republican despotism is more fertile in acts of tyranny, because everyone has a hand in it.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Hands, Revolution, Republican

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• If the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining freedom, it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal with political, as they now deal with scientific questions.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Self, Political

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2006). “Huxley's Autobiography and Essays”, p.234, Cosimo, Inc.

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• It is far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism, for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Giving, Important, Apathy

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• The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Freedom, Political, Greek

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (2012). “The Philosophy of History”, p.104, Courier Corporation

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• You do not know the unfathomable cowardice of humanity...servile in the face of force, pitiless in the face of weakness, implacable before blunders, indulgent before crimes...and patient to the point of martyrdom before all the violences of bold despotism.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Humanity, Liberty, Weakness

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• There is this of good in real evils; they deliver us, while they last, from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Real, Evil, Wickedness

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.455

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• What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy... Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors... You have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Army, Men, Doors

  "The Writings of Abraham Lincoln" by Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 5, (pp. 6-7), 2004.

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• Not mythical material productive forces, but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is common-sense and moral courage.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Ideas, Common Sense, Liberty

  Ludwig Von Mises (1947). “Planned Chaos”, p.83, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• I am entirely persuaded that the agitations of the public mind advance its powers, and that at every vibration between the points of liberty and despotism, something will be gained for the former. As men become better informed, their rulers must respect them the more.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Mind, Liberty

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.177, Cambridge University Press

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• Despotism can do without faith but freedom cannot.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Tyranny, Can Do

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2012). “Democracy in America”, p.282, University of Chicago Press

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• A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts, or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.

  Edward Gibbon

  Art, Cities, History

  Edward Gibbon (1854). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, with notes by Milman and Guizot. Ed. by W. Smith”, p.359

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• People forgot that industry is not an end in itself, but should be only a means to insure to man his material subsistence and to make accessible to him the blessings of a higher intellectual culture. Where industry is everything and man is nothing begins the realm of a ruthless economic despotism whose workings are no less disastrous than those of any political despotism.

  Rudolf Rocker

  Mean, Blessing, Men

  Rudolf Rocker (2004). “Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice”, p.2, AK Press

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• How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.

  James Monroe

  Country, Fate, Rights

  James Monroe (2006). “The Papers of James Monroe: Selected correspondence and papers, 1776-1794”, Greenwood Publishing Group

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• Superstition changes a man to a beast, fanaticism makes him a wild beast, and despotism a beast of burden.

  Jean-Francois de La Harpe

  Men, Superstitions, Beast

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• The seeds of freedom . . . have now been scattered where despotism and tyranny ranked and ruled, will be watered by the enlivening dews of God's clemency, till the reapers abolitionists shall shout the harvest home.

  Henry McNeal Turner

  Home, Dew, Harvest

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• We, the workers and inhabitants of St Petersburg, of various estates, our wives, our children, and our aged, helpless parents, come to THEE, O SIRE to seek justice and protection. We are impoverished; we are oppressed, overburdened with excessive toil, contemptuously treated . . . We are suffocating in despotism and lawlessness. O SIRE we have no strength left, and our endurance is at an end. We have reached that frightful moment when death is better than the prolongation of our unbearable sufferings. . .

  Orlando Figes

  Children, Justice, Wife

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• Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Parent, Libertarian

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence 1793-1798”, p.474, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Socialism is the phantastic younger brother of despotism, which it wants to inherit. Socialism wants to have the fullness of state force which before only existed in despotism. ... However, it goes further than anything in the past because it aims at the formal destruction of the individual ... who ... can be used to improve communities by an expedient organ of government.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Brother, Past, Government

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• Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.

  Immanuel Kant

  Opposites, Liberty, Democracy

  Immanuel Kant (1932). “Perpetual peace”

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