Tyranny Quotes - Page 12

• They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening

  George Orwell

  Reality, Tyrants, Events

  George Orwell (2003). “1984”, Plume Books

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• The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. Under this Republic the rewards of industry belong to those who earn them.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Doubt, Republic, Rewards

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• Tyranny has no need of arts or sciences, for its policy, which is very shallow and without any refinement, only consists in shedding blood.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Art, Blood, Tyrants

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• If our constitution had followed the style of Saint Paul, the First Amendment might have concluded: "But the greatest of these is speech." In the darkness of tyranny, this is the key to the sunlight. If it is granted, all doors open. If it is withheld, none.

  Robert Kennedy

  Keys, Doors, Darkness

  Robert F. Kennedy (1964). “Rights for Americans: the speeches of Robert F. Kennedy”

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• That humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist injustice and tyranny render them unfit to cope with the cunning and power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of liberty trust to the professions of others because they are themselves sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no regard to anything but their own unprincipled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish them.

  William Hazlitt

  Hurt, Men, Humanity

  William Hazlitt (2016). “Characters of Shakespeare's Plays”, p.48, William Hazlitt

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• The great have private feelings of their own, to which the interests of humanity and justice must curtsy. Their interests are so far from being the same as those of the community, that they are in direct and necessary opposition to them; their power is at the expense of OUR weakness; their riches of OUR poverty; their pride of OUR degradation; their splendour of OUR wretchedness; their tyranny of OUR servitude.

  William Hazlitt

  Pride, Justice, Community

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.411, Delphi Classics

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• I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.

  Eric Hoffer

  Fate, Hands, Tyrants

  Eric Hoffer (1969). “Working and Thinking on the Waterfront: A Journal, June 1958-May 1959”

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• Libertarianism and communism are equally crazy in opposite ways. Libertarians believe that it is possible to privatize everything without anarchy, while communists believe that it is possible to socialize everything without tyranny.

  Michael Lind

  Crazy, Believe, Opposites

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• The impious man, who sells his country's freedom
  Makes all the guilt of tyranny his own.
  His are her slaughters, her oppressions his;
  Just heav'n! reserve your choicest plagues for him,
  And blast the venal wretch.

  Henry Martyn

  Country, Men, Guilt

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• It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government.

  Mercy Otis Warren

  Religious, Rights, Government

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• The greatness of non-violent resistance is that even as man is faced with tyranny, and the resulting suffering, he responds to hate with love, to prejudice with tolerance, to arrogance with humility, to humiliation with dignity, and to violence with reason.

  Liu Xia

  Motivational, Hate, Humility

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• There is such a torture, happily unknown to ancient tyranny, as talking a man to death. Marcus Aurelius advises to assent readily to great talkers--in hopes, I suppose, to put an end to the argument.

  Laurence Sterne

  Men, Talking, Ancient

  Laurence Sterne (1790). “The Works of Laurence Sterne: Complete in Eight Volumes”, p.130

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• Of all the tyrannies which have usurped power over humanity, few have been able to enslave the mind and body as imperiously as drug addiction.

  Freda Adler

  Addiction, Drug, Humanity

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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, Tyrants, Political

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• The tyranny of distance is such an important element of policy and the allocation of resources.

  George Brandis

  Distance, Important, Elements

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• Where no individual in a community is denied his rights, the mass are the more perfectly protected in theirs; for whenever any class is subject to fraud or injustice, it shows that the spirit of tyranny is at work, and no one can tell where or how or when the infection will spread.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Rights, Class, Community

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Ann Dexter Gordon (1997). “The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: In the school of anti-slavery, 1840 to 1866”, p.410, Rutgers University Press

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• Government began in tyranny and force, began in the feudalism of the soldier and bigotry of the priest; and the ideas of justice and humanity have been fighting their way, like a thunderstorm, against the organized selfishness of human nature.

  Wendell Phillips

  Fighting, Government, Ideas

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.14

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• Laughter takes the tyranny of the lies we are told and told and told and it blows them apart.

  Kate Clinton

  Laughter, Lying, Blow

  Kate Clinton (2012). “What the L?”, p.1979, Bywater Books

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• all social relations exist and grow in the human mind. That one despot can rule over a million other men rests absolutely on their state of mind. They believe that he does; let them change their minds, and he does not.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Believe, Men, Perception

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1904). “Human Work”, p.39, Rowman Altamira

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• The dictator is also the scapegoat; in assuming absolute authority, he assumes absolute guilt; and the oppressed masses, groaning under the yoke, know themselves to be innocent as lambs, while they pray hypocritically for deliverance.

  Mary McCarthy

  Guilt, Yoke, Lambs

  Mary McCarthy (1975). “The company she keeps”, Not Avail

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• In more than half the nations of our world, torture certifies that the form of government is tyranny. Only tyranny, no matter how camouflaged, needs and employs torturers. Torture has no ideology.

  Martha Gellhorn

  Our World, Government, Needs

  Martha Gellhorn (1988). “The View from the Ground”, p.356, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• it was the United States which first established general suffrage for men upon the two principles that 'taxation without representation is tyranny' and that governments to be just should 'derive their consent from the governed.' The unanswerable logic of these two principles is responsible for the extension of suffrage to men and women the world over. In the United States, however, women are still taxed without 'representation' and still live under a government to which they have given no 'consent.

  Carrie Chapman Catt

  Men, Two, Justice

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• Once you get a tyranny, you don't easily get rid of it. Much better to remember about eternal vigilance.

  Martha Gellhorn

  Remember, Vigilance, Eternal

  Martha Gellhorn (2015). “The View From The Ground”, p.332, Granta Books

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• The indifference of men, far more than their tyranny, is the torment of women.

  Jules Michelet

  Men, Indifference, Torment

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• none can be Tyrants but Cowards.

  Mary Astell

  Tyrants, Coward

  Mary Astell (2002). “A Serious Proposal to the Ladies”, p.247, Broadview Press

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