Tyrants Quotes - Page 8

• Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Freedom, Slave Owners, Political

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• Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.

  Wendell Phillips

  Government, People, Debt

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.421

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• If you want a war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men are ever subject, because doctrines get inside a man's reason and betray him against himself. Civilized men have done their fiercest fighting for doctrines.

  William Graham Sumner

  Betrayal, War, Fighting

  William Graham Sumner (1963). “Social Darwinism: selected essays”, Prentice Hall

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• It's important to remember that Bush Derangement Syndrome on the left - comparing him to Hitler, calling him a terrorist and a tyrant - preceded Obama Derangement Syndrome on the right.

  John Avlon

  Important, Calling, Remember

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• the greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can represent grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.

  Hannah Arendt

  Government, Political, Pressure

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• Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought.

  Victor Hugo

  Writing, Play, People

  "Les misérables".

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• When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.He becomes a sort of hollow,posing dummy,the conventional figure of a sahib.For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives",and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him.He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it.

  George Orwell

  Men, White Man, Trying

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• Tyrants forego all respect for humanity in proportion as they are sunk beneath it. Taught to believe themselves of a different species, they really become so, lose their participation with their kind, and in mimicking the god dwindle into the brute.

  William Hazlitt

  Believe, Humanity, Mimicking

  William Hazlitt (1848). “The Miscellaneous Works”, p.181

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• Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway? – diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you'll have no tyrant states . Why, if they follow this conformity business they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? But seriously, and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.

  Ralph Ellison

  Passion, Men, Thinking

  "Invisible Man".

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• Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.

  John le Carre

  House, Tyranny, Possession

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• In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Order, Stuff, Mental Illness

  "History and Utopia". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1960.

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• The tyrant is a child of Pride Who drinks from his sickening cup Recklessness and vanity, Until from his high crest headlong He plummets to the dust of hope.

  Sophocles

  Children, Pride, Vanity

  Sophocles (1977). “The Oedipus Cycle: An English Version”, Harcourt

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• Of all insults, the temporary condescension of a master to a slave is the most outrageous and galling. That potentate who most condescends, mark him well; for that potentate, if occasion come, will prove your uttermost tyrant.

  Herman Melville

  Insult, Slave, Masters

  Herman Melville (1970). “White-jacket: Or, The World in a Man-of-war”, p.276, Northwestern University Press

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• I do not see why I should be polite to tyrants, who slobber of humanitarianism and think only of their own petty interests.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Thinking, Should, Interest

  "Science in a Free Society". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1978.

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• No people to whom liberty is given can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant.

  Frederick Douglass

  Hands, Iron, People

  Frederick Douglass (2012). “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass”, p.447, Courier Corporation

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• 

  An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

  Plutarch

  Freedom, Economic Inequality, Political

  "When Inequality Isn't" by John Mauldin, www.forbes.com. March 29, 2014.

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• The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

  Mark Twain

  Peace, Truth, Lying

  Mark Twain (2017). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated Edition): Novels, Short Stories, Memoir, Travel Books, Letters, Biography, Articles & Speeches: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, Yankee in King Arthur's Court…”, p.2818, e-artnow

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• Once the law is broken with impunity, each man regains the right to any means he deems proper or necessary in order to defend himself against the new tyrant, the one who can break the law.

  Allan Bloom

  Mean, Men, Order

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• A tardy vengeance shares the tyrant's guilt.

  Edward Young

  Guilt, Vengeance, Share

  Edward Young (1730). “Busiris, King of Egypt. A tragedy, etc”, p.17

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• You know the words from the Bible: 'Build not on sand, but on rock....' Tyrant leaders respect only firmness...and laugh at persons who give in to them.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  War, Rocks, Giving

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• Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there is in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty born of the imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance. Believing himself to be the slave of God, he imitates his master, and of all tyrants the worst is a slave in power.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Believe, Men, Imperfection

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.444, Library of Alexandria

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• 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

  Law, People, Lust

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• Of the tyrant, spies and informers are the principal instruments. War is his favorite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader.

  Aristotle

  War, People, Leader

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• 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

  Government, Revolution, Natural

  Lysander Spooner (2004). “An Essay on the Trial by Jury”, p.10, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• Socialism was made to order for tyrants.

  James Cook

  Order, Socialism, Made

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