Tyranny Quotes - Page 27

• The great battleground for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe... the lands of the rising peoples. Their revolution is the greatest in human history. They seek an end to injustice, tyranny and exploitation. More than an end, they seek a beginning.

  John F. Kennedy

  Land, Southern, Rising

  Speech to Congress on Urgent National Needs, delivered 25 May 1961, Washington, D.C.

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• America has been a land of dreams. A land where the aspirations of people from countries cluttered with rich, cumbersome, aristocratic, ideological pasts can reach for what once seemed unattainable. Here they have tried to make dreams come true. Yet now... we are threatened by a new and particularly American menace. It is not the menace of class war, of ideology, of poverty, of disease, of illiteracy, or demagoguery, or of tyranny, though these now plague most of the world. It is the menace of unreality.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Dream, Country, War

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1962). “The Image or What Happened to the American Dream”

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• I have sworn upon the altar of god.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Government, Faith Religion

  Letter to Benjamin Rush, 23 Sept. 1800

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• We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.

  Elizabeth Drew

  Pain, Loss, Frustration

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• ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Cheating, Understanding, Oratory

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “The Best Of Ambrose Bierce: The Damned Thing + An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge + The Devil's Dictionary + Chickamauga (4 Classics in 1 Book)”, p.170, e-artnow

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• Our mission has been the protection of the wage-worker, now; to increase his wages; to cut hours off the long workday, which was killing him; to improve the safety and the sanitary conditions of the workshop; to free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.

  Samuel Gompers

  Cutting, Long, Safety

  Samuel Gompers, William Green (1921). “The American Federationist”

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• The British government had not engaged in any serious actual oppression of the colonies before 1774, but it had claimed powers not granted by the governed, powers that made oppression possible, powers that it began to exercise in 1774 in response to colonial denial of them. The Revolution came about not to overthrow tyranny, but to prevent it.

  Edmund Morgan

  Exercise, Government, History

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• The great theme of modern British history is the fate of freedom. The 18th century inherits, after the Civil War, this very peculiar political animal. It's not a democracy, but it's not a tyranny. It's not like the rest of the world, the rest of Europe. There is a parliament, laws have to be made, elections are made.

  Simon Schama

  War, Fate, Animal

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• Now what is it moves our very hearts, and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this first, that they have done no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their sufferings so especially touching.

  John Henry Newman

  Moving, Heart, Animal

  "Parochial and Plain Sermons".

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• Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. It seeks to show new perspectives and other choices. It is a way to help expand and liberate the consciousness; our experiences, understandings, imaginings, options and thereby our lives.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Lying, Men

  "The Soul of Man under Socialism". Book by Oscar Wilde, 1891.

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

  Winston Churchill

  Fate, Victory, Unconquerable Will

  Message to people of Europe launching V for Victory propaganda campaign, 20 July 1941

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• This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State, that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long run sustains, nourishes, and impels human destinies.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Running, Destiny, Civilization

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

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• For reforms ameliorate the situation of the working class, they lighten the weight of the chains labour is burdened with by capitalism, but they are not sufficient to crush capitalism and to emancipate the workers from their tyranny.

  Clara Zetkin

  Crush, Class, Reform

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• I see no light behind that terrible curtain. I do not think one religion better than another and I think the Christian religion has brought far more misery crime and suffering far more tyranny and evil than any other.

  Eliza Lynn Linton

  Christian, Thinking, Light

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• To all the revolutionaries fighting to throw off the yoke of tyranny around the world: look at British democracy. Is that what you want?

  Andy Zaltzman

  Fighting, Democracy, Looks

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• Faith and force ... are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny.

  Ayn Rand

  Force, Periods, Dictatorship

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.174, Penguin

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• The ultimate tyranny in a society is not control by martial law. It is control by the psychological manipulation of consciousness, through which reality is defined so that those who exist within it do not even realize that they are in prison. They do not even realize that there is something outside of where they exist.

  Barbara Marciniak

  Reality, Law, Manipulation

  Barbara Marciniak (1992). “Bringers of the Dawn: Teachings from the Pleiadians”, p.78, Simon and Schuster

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• Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well-known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens' attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II's of England via the Armada, Germany's twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan's bid for an empire of Asia; 3) incompetence or decadence, as in the case of the late Roman empire, the last Romanovs and the last imperial dynasty of China; and finally 4) folly or perversity.

  Barbara Tuchman

  War, Ambition, Race

  Barbara Tuchman (2015). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.11, Crux Publishing Ltd

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• There are only two possible forms of control: one internal and the other external; religious control and political control. They are of such a nature that when the religious barometer rises, the barometer of [external, i.e., political control] falls and likewise, when the religious barometer falls, the political barometer, that is political control and tyranny, rises. That is the law of humanity, a law of history. If civilized man falls into disbelief and immorality, the way is prepared for some gigantic and colossal tyrant, universal and immense.

  Juan Donoso Cortes

  Religious, Fall, Men

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• Virtue comes through contemplation of the divine, and the exercise of philosophy. But it also comes through public service. The one is incomplete without the other. Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless.

  Iain Pears

  Philosophy, Exercise, Virtue

  "The Dream of Scipio". Book by Iain Pears, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2002.

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• Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless.

  Iain Pears

  Pointless

  Iain Pears (2003). “Dream of Scipio”, p.44, Penguin

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• The Green Shore is an engrossing novel about political oppression, played out on an intimate family scale. Bakopoulos charts the subtle, gnawing pressures of life under the Greek junta - the steady drip of daily coercion - with an exacting empathy. In particular, her depiction of love under tyranny - by turns hesitant, furtive and liberating - is as astute as it is moving.

  Peter Ho Davies

  Moving, Empathy, Political

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• When we mistake words for reality, we are subject to the tyranny of words.

  Taitetsu Unno

  Mistake, Reality, Subjects

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• The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws.

  Edmund Burke

  Stupid, Law, Essence

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• A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Defense, Wells, Informed Citizenry

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