Tyranny Quotes - Page 12

• Is it not High Time for the People of this Country explicitly to declare, whether they will be Freemen or Slaves? It is an important Question which ought to be decided. It concerns us more than any Thing in this Life. The Salvation of our Souls is interested in the Event: For wherever Tyranny is establish'd, Immorality of every Kind comes in like a Torrent. It is in the Interest of Tyrants to reduce the People to Ignorance and Vice.

  Samuel Adams

  Country, Ignorance, Men

  "The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773".

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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• In proportion as the people are accustomed to manage their affairs by their own active intervention, instead of leaving them to the government, their desires will turn to repelling tyranny, rather than to tyrannizing: while in proportion as all ready initiative and direction resides in the government, and individuals habitually feel and act as under its perpetual tutelage, popular institutions develop in them not the desire of freedom, but an unmeasured appetite for place and power.

  John Stuart Mill

  Government, People, Leaving

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• It is perfectly clear that people, given no alternative, will choose tyranny over anarchy, because anarchy is the worst tyranny of all... The special nature of liberties is that they can be defended only as long as we still have them. So the very first signs of their erosion must be resisted, whether the issue be domestic surveillance by the Army, so-called preventive detention, or the freedom of corporate television, or that of a campus newspaper.

  Eric Sevareid

  Army, Erosion, Issues

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• Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.... An attempt to scrutinize men's thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.

  William Godwin

  War, Character, Men

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• I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.

  James Joyce

  Soul, Atheism, Doe

  James Joyce (1959). “Critical writings”

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• The Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Enemy, Atheism, Church

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• The use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and should have only one aim, that is, to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence possible.

  Karl Popper

  Should Have, Atheism, Use

  Karl Popper (2012). “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, p.360, Routledge

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• Two hundred years ago the forces of freedom challenged this idea. The children of the new enlightenment rose up to defy the tyranny of arrogant clergy and the censorship of pious bureaucrats. They boldly proclaimed that the state must be free from religious coercion and that religion must be free from state control. All individuals have the right to pursue the dictates of their own conscience. All citizens even have the right not to be religious at all.

  Sherwin Wine

  Religious, Children, Years

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• Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

  C. S. Lewis

  Tyrants, Libertarian Party, Democracies Have

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.324, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. 'Respect for religion' has become a code phrase meaning 'fear of religion.' Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

  Salman Rushdie

  Religious, Art, Real

  "Salman Rushdie: ‘I Stand With Charlie Hebdo, as We All Must’". blogs.wsj.com. January 07, 2015.

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• When the Founders thought of democracy, they saw democracy in the political sphere - a sphere strictly limited by the Constitution's well-defined and enumerated powers given the federal government. Substituting democratic decision making for what should be private decision making is nothing less than tyranny dressed up.

  Walter E. Williams

  Government, Political, Decision

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• A family is a tyranny ruled over by it's weakest member.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Family, Members

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• The greatest tyranny is to love I where we are not loved again.

  Honore de Balzac

  Love

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• How far does one combine resistance to over-control with social justice, i.e. tolerable living for people in general? We are too selfish to be trusted, if left free, to give away enough to make people comfortable enough to give them a chance. Yet if all this is ordered for us, as to some extent it has to be, it so soon leads to tyranny. It is a very difficult problem. If only human beings had more pity, unselfishness, and justice and didn't need coercion to treat each other decently.

  Rose Macaulay

  Selfish, Compassion, Giving

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• Cruelty was the devil, and most people were, in one way or another, cruel. Tyranny, suppression, persecution, torture, slavery, war, neglect - all were cruel. The world was acid and sour with hate, fat with greed, yellow with the triumph of the strong and the rich.

  Rose Macaulay

  Strong, Hate, War

  Rose Macaulay (Dame.) (1940). “And No Man's Wit”

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