Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Tyranny

Violence ever defeats its own ends. Where you cannot drive you can always persuade. A gentle word, a kind look, a god-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles. There is a secret pride in every human heart than revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist

If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher’s cleaver.
Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet

I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer

The worst form of tyranny the world has ever known the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright

Free governments have committed more flagrant acts of tyranny than the most perfectly despotic governments we have ever known.
Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman

A tyrant never tasteth of true friendship, nor of perfect liberty.
Diogenes Laertius (f.3rd Century CE) Biographer of the Greek Philosophers

Dictators never invent their own opportunities.
Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism—despotism during the campaign—is indispensable.
Walter Bagehot (1826–77) English Economist, Journalist

Of all the evils that infest a state, a tyrant is the greatest; his sole will commands the laws, and lords it over them.
Euripides (480–406 BCE) Ancient Greek Dramatist

There is a natural and necessary progression, from the extreme of anarchy to the extreme of tyranny; and arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
George Washington (1732–99) American Head of State, Military Leader

Tyranny is always weakness.
James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic

A tyrant is the worst disease, and the cause of all others.
William Blake (1757–1827) English Poet, Painter, Printmaker

It is far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than to think.
Hannah Arendt (1906–75) German-American Philosopher, Political Theorist

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) American Head of State

Death is softer by far than tyranny.
Aeschylus (525–456 BCE) Greek Poet

Without general elections, without freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, without the free battle of opinions, life in every public institution withers away, becomes a caricature of itself, and bureaucracy rises as the only deciding factor.
Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) German Left-Wing Revolutionary

Are we aware of our obligations to a mob? It is the mob that labor in your fields and serve in your houses—that man your navy, and recruit your army—that have enabled you to defy the world, and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair. You may call the people a mob; but do not forget that a mob too often speaks the sentiments of the people.
Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet

And with necessity, the tyrant’s plea, excused his devilish deeds.
John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater

The poor suffer twice at the rioter’s hands. First, his destructive fury scars their neighborhood; second, the atmosphere of accommodation and consent is changed to one of hostility and resentment.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–73) American Head of State, Political leader

A king ruleth as he ought; a tyrant as he lists; a king to the profit of all, a tyrant only to please a few.
Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar

Hardness ever of hardness is the mother.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright

Tyranny and anarchy are never far asunder.
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British Philosopher, Economist

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him, they crush those beneath them.
Emily Bronte (1818–48) English Novelist, Poet

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.
Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author

In inner-party politics, these methods lead, as we shall yet see, to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a “dictator” substitutes himself for the central committee.
Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Russian Marxist Revolutionary

Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist

It is worthy of observation that the most imperious masters over their own servants are at the same time the most abject slaves to the servants of other masters.
Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian

Power, unless managed with gentleness and discretion, does but make a man the more hated; no intervals of good humor, no starts of bounty, will atone for tyranny and oppression.
Jeremy Collier (1650–1726) Anglican Church Historian, Clergyman

The common good of a collective—a race, a class, a state—was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men’s hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. The believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with the declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing of themselves. But observe the results.
Ayn Rand (1905–82) Russian-born American Novelist, Philosopher

The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.
Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author

Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator

The mob has many heads but no brains.
English Proverb

There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.
Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist

In every tyrant’s heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
Aeschylus (525–456 BCE) Greek Poet

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) American Poet

Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to prosecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.
Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, the Caesars and Napoleons will arise to make them miserable.
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist

Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.
Hannah Arendt (1906–75) German-American Philosopher, Political Theorist

Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.
Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman

With society and its public, there is no longer any other language than that of bombs, barricades, and all that follows.
Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French Actor, Drama Theorist

That sovereign is a tyrant who knows no law but his own caprice.
Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author

Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but 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 (1898-1963) Irish-born British Academic, Author, Literary Scholar

People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.
Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman

Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know, but leech-like to their fainting country cling, till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,—a people starved and stabbed in the untilled field…
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist

The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
Denis Diderot (1713–84) French Philosopher, Writer

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist

Man is more disposed to domination than freedom; and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations.
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) German Philosopher, Linguist, Statesman

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