Tyranny Quotes - Page 9

• The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism.

  Angelina Grimke

  Doctrine, Libertarian, Unqualified

  Sarah Grimke, Angelina Grimke (2015). “On Slavery and Abolitionism: Essays and Letters”, p.97, Penguin

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• In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

  Edward Gibbon

  Wisdom, Responsibility, Libertarian Party

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• Our liberty will not be secured at the sword's point... We must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it. And when the people reaches that height, God will provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, tyranny will crumble like a house of cards, and liberty will shine out like the first dawn.

  Jose Rizal

  House Of Cards, Idols, People

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• When justices seize authority from the other branches of the federal government, as well as state and local governments, under the rubric of judicial review, that’s tyranny.

  Mark Levin

  Government, Justice, Judicial Review

  "Men in Black". Interview with Kathryn Lopez, www.nationalreview.com. February 1, 2005.

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• The executive, in our government is not the sole, it is scarcely the principle, object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislature is the most formidable dread at present and will be for many years. That of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Years, Voting

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, correspondence and private papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by T.J. Randolph”

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• The tyranny of majorities may be as bad as the tyranny of Kings.

  Arthur Balfour

  Kings, Majority, May

  "News Of The Week". The Spectator Magazine, No. 3,380 (p. 1), archive.spectator.co.uk. April 8, 1893.

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• Our principles were revolutionary. We began as a small, weak republic. But we survived. Our example inspired others, imperfectly at times, but it inspired them nevertheless. This constitutional republic, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, prospered and grew strong. To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world - nothing more and nothing less.

  Ronald Reagan

  Strong, Men, America

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• The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is, it follows, in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.

  Gene Sharp

  Determination, Reflection, Government

  Gene Sharp (2011). “From Dictatorship to Democracy”, p.26, Profile Books

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• Karl Marx was the foremost hater and most incessant whiner in the history of Western Civilization. He was a spoiled, overeducated brat who never grew up; he just grew more shrill as he grew older. His lifelong hatred and whining have led to the deaths (so far) of perhaps a hundred million people, depending on how many people perished under Mao's tyranny. We will probably never know.

  Gary North

  Civilization, People, Hatred

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• Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.

  Mark Levin

  Principles, Politics, Antidote

  Mark R. Levin (2009). “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• The tyranny of mankind; it was like the obstinate drip of water falling on a stone and hollowing it little by little; and this drip continued, falling obstinately, falling without pause on the souls of the children.

  Halldór Laxness

  Children, Fall, Water

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• In a state of tranquility, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to tyranny.

  Samuel Adams

  Art, War, Luxury

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• Violence always seems to me the worst form of tyranny. It deprives people of their rights, including the right to live.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Rights, People, Violence

  Rebecca Solnit (2014). “The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness”, p.27, Trinity University Press

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• Monarchy degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into savage violence and chaos.

  Polybius

  Historical, Democracy, Aristocracy

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• A revolution without a prior reformation would collapse or become a totalitarian tyranny. A reformation means that masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don't know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won't act for change but won't strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution

  Saul Alinsky

  Mean, Past, Self

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• And now, what has Anarchism to say to all this, this bankruptcy of republicanism, this modern empire that has grown up on the ruins of our early freedom? We say this, that the sin our fathers sinned was that they did not trust liberty wholly. They thought it possible to compromise between liberty and government, believing the latter to be 'a necessary evil,' and the moment the compromise was made, the whole misbegotten monster of our present tyranny began to grow. Instruments which are set up to safeguard rights become the very whip with which the free are struck.

  Voltairine de Cleyre

  Father, Believe, Rights

  Voltairine de Cleyre (2012). “Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre -- Anarchist, Feminist, Genius”, p.99, SUNY Press

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• Nor is the guilt entirely with the warmongers, plutocrats and demagogues. If people permit exploitation and regimentation in any name, they deserve their slavery. A tyrant does not make his tyranny possible. It is made by the people and not otherwise.

  Jack Parsons

  Names, Tyrants, People

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• Many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of Nazism, and sincerely hate all manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Hate, Thinking, Aberration

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• Machiavel, discoursing on these matters, finds virtue to be so essentially necessary to the establishment and preservation of liberty, that he thinks it impossible for a corrupted people to set up a good government, or for a tyranny to be introduced if they be virtuous; and makes this conclusion, 'That where the matter (that is, the body of the people) is not corrupted, tumults and disorders do not hurt; and where it is corrupted, good laws do no good:' which being confirmed by reason and experience, I think no wise man has ever contradicted him.

  Algernon Sidney

  Wise, Hurt, Men

  Algernon Sidney (1805). “Discourses on Government”, p.83

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• Liberty, when it degrades into licentiousness, begets confusion, and frequently ends in tyranny or some woeful confusion.

  George Washington

  Confusion, Liberty, Ends

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• [T]he main evil of the present democratic institutions of the united states does not raise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Country, Europe, Evil

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• The most effective means of preventing tyranny is to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Tyrants, People

  Thomas Jefferson (1900). “The Life and Writings of ...”

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• . . . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them.

  Gerry Spence

  Tyrants, America, People

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• Tyranny is tyranny, no matter what its form; the free man will resist it if his courage serves.

  Learned Hand

  Men, Matter, Form

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

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• Tyrannies not only want to control your mind and thoughts but your flesh as well.

  Ma Jian

  Mind, Flesh, Want

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