Quotes about tyranny

In the first 50 years of the filibuster, it was used only 35 times. But the last Congress alone had 112 cloture motions filed, plus threats of more. This is the tyranny of the minority.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

Tyranny will make an entire population into readers of poetry.

The framers were realists they recognized that the best constitution in the world could be distorted and destroyed by men determined to do so.

The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.

Our culture is just a series of checks and balances. The whole idea that we're in a battle between tyranny and freedom - it's a series of pendulum swings.

Freedom is not won by merely overthrowing a tyrannical ruler or an oppressive regime. That is usually only the prelude to a new tyranny, a new oppression.

When more Americans prefer freebies to freedom, these great United States will become a fertile ground for tyranny.

Freedom is never easily won, but once established, freedom lasts, spreads and chokes out tyranny.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold.

Eliminate the tyranny of magic from mankind.

Everything is mended by the soil.

People floating like pollen in search of more fertile soil.

The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should guard against the encroachment of religion in areas where it has no place, and in particular the control of education by religious authority. The attempts to ban the teaching of evolution or other scientific theories -- a feeble echo of medieval church tyranny and hostility to learning, but an echo nonetheless are serious threats to freedom of inquiry and should be vigorously combated.

Liberation from the tyranny of the body contributes to greatness, but just as much to greatness in sin as to greatness in virtue.

The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.

It is blasphemy to call tyrants and oppressors, God’s ministers. They are more properly the messengers of Satan to buffet us. No rulers are properly God’s ministers, but such as are just, ruling in the fear of God

In her mind, her actions were treason to the false federation, but loyalty to the real United States of America, the one created by a document she had memorized. The real document was set on fire by what the news called "petty arsons" when the National Archives burned down. Bev knew better—she knew who was behind the destruction of the country's most important document. It was more than a document, it was a symbol—a symbol of freedom from tyranny, and one the Federal Government could no longer a

The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.

We just can't trust the American people to make those types of choices.... Government has to make those choices for people.

The only way to make a difference is to acquire power.

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

In their passion for sameness, the tyrants made themselves more and more powerful. All others grew correspondingly weaker and weaker. New bureaus and directorates, odd ministries, leaped into existence for the most improbable purposes. These became the citadels of a new aristocracy, rulers who kept the giant wheel of government careening along, spreading destruction, violence, and chaos wherever they touched.

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.

Authority that can not be questioned is tyranny" Terry Pratchett: A Slip of the Keyboard

The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense...When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.

If political authority is not limited, the division of powers, ordinarily the guarantee of freedom, becomes a danger and a scourge.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

Implicit … in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad....A rejection of absolutism, in all its forms, may sometimes slip into moral relativism or even nihilism, an erosion of values that hold soc

Man is the highest essence of man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence.

Despots are elected and deposed.Laws are passed and repealed.Nations rise and fall.Individual liberty is eternal.

There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss—the abyss from which there is no return.

The idea [passing the 17th amendment] benefited from a unique political and cultural atmosphere that consumed a nation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries-a progressive populism promoting simultaneously radical egalitarianism and centralized authoritarianism.

This is why it is not true that culture can be, even temporarily, suspended in order to make way for a new culture. Man’s unbroken testimony as to his suffering and his nobility cannot be suspended; the act of breathing cannot be suspended. There is no culture without legacy, and we cannot and must not reject anything of ours, the legacy of the West. Whatever the works of the future may be, they will bear the same secret, made up of courage and freedom, nourished by the daring of thousands of ar

As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

In this confusion we begin to see what lies behind John Paul II's startling warning about democracy "effectively mov[ing] towards a form of totalitarianism." It begins to happen at a practical level when we simultaneously hold that rights which arise from the dignity of the person are also a matter of "bargaining." New rights can be claimed or created, and whatever privileges can be negotiated around them are then secured by reference to human dignity, even when these new rights are directly con

Free society's organize around the "invisible hand" while Force society's organize around the State's "visible fist.

Tyranny flourishes in those societies that reject the Reformed Faith. Tyranny is squelched and liberty flourishes in those societies that embrace the Reformed Faith in all its fullness.

What manner of men had lived in those days...who had so eagerly surrendered their sovereignty for a lie and a delusion? Why had they been so anxious to believe that the government could solve problems for them which had been pridefully solved, many times over, by their fathers? Had their characters become so weak and debased, so craven and emasculated, that offers of government dole had become more important than their liberty and their humanity? Had they not know that power delegated to the gov

So long as tyranny exists, in whatever form, man's deepest aspiration must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

We may indeed in counsel point to the higher road, but we cannot compel any free creature to walk upon it. That leadeth to tyranny, which disfigureth good and maketh it seem hateful.

A ruler who discerning justice refuseth to it the sanction of law, demanding abnegation of rights and self-sacrifice, will not drive his subjects to these virtues, virtuous only if free, but by unnaturally making justice unlawful, will drive them rather to rebellion against all law.

With chilling care, my hardshipshave managed to implant a spiritof recklessness within me,one that impels me to point out injustice and wrongdoing.So, while many strive to have a toil free life, I spend my time criticizing tyrants,and so the spirit of subversion was quickly established within me. Now all I can do is calmly wait for cold death to seize me.

The tyrant is a child of PrideWho drinks from his sickening cup Recklessness and vanity,Until from his high crest headlongHe plummets to the dust of hope.

Secular ideologies preach liberty but practice tyranny.

The liberation from ignorance and tyranny was a long war, because the oppressors always had the advantage. They smooth-talked the masses with lies and promises.

The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind.

For your sake, jewel,I am glad at soul I have no other child;For thy escape would teach me tyranny,To hang clogs on them.

There are so many different forms of silence: the silence that tyrannical states force on their citizens, stealing their memories, rewriting their histories, and imposing on them a state-sanctioned identity. Or the silence of witnesses who choose to ignore or not speak the truth, and of victims who at times become complicit in the crimes committed against them. Then there are the silences we indulge in about ourselves, our personal mythologies, the stories we impose upon our real lives.

that we die, our very humanity slayed, whenever we choose to remain silent in the face of tyranny.

Yes, from drinking too much beer and generally being a tyrannical egomaniac.

The tyrant’s formula for every genocide since the beginning of time: differentiate, divide, destroy.

A God out there and values out there, if they existed, would be utterly useless and unintelligible to us. There is nothing to be gained by nostalgia for the old objectivism, which was in any case used only to justify arrogance, tyranny, and cruelty. People [forget] ... how utterly hateful the old pre-humanitarianism world was.

With every drop of my blood I hate and execrate every form of tyranny, every form of slavery. I hate dictation. I love liberty.

Peace is found when people stand for morality and rejectculture. Defend freedom at all costs and at all times and peacewill rule the world instead of tyrants.

There are always a few, Claire, who like being told what to do instead of being required to think. And those are the ones you should fear. That goes equally for humans, I'm afraid. Critical thinking has become a sadly rare skill these days.

... [T]he other lesson history has taught us - that tyranny and oppression are no match for compassion ... that the fanatical shouts of the bullies of the world are invariably silenced by the unified voices of decency that rise up to meet them.

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of political parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. DO NOT FALL FOR IT.

Sometimes, the anger built up so much that people had to scream out their treasonous thoughts just to keep on breathing. Maybe not all of the were really crazy, but it was best for everyone involved to pretend that they were.

Surround yourself with people too afraid to speak, and you left yourself to only your own ideas. That could be disastrous. It was important to have men who would question you and see flaws in your plans, so long as you could control them. It was all about control.

What Churchill described as the twin marauders of war and tyranny have been almost entirely banished from our continent. Today, hundreds of millions dwell in freedom, from the Baltic to the Adriatic, from the Western Approaches to the Aegean.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.

The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor and this I know that where law ends there tyranny begins.

He who strikes terror into others is himself in continual fear.

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.

Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

'Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.

Some men and women aren't looking for money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. They simply want to watch the world burn.

It is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men'smarriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize andsegregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a fewgreat hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens,as nurses do with a family of children. It is not anarchy, it istyranny; but tyranny is a workable thing.

While we are under the tyranny of Priests, it will ever be their interest, to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith.

Communism is as crude an attempt to explain society and the individual as if a surgeon were to perform his delicate operations with a meat ax. All that is subtle in human psychology and in the structure of society (which is even more complex), all of this is reduced to crude economic processes. The whole created being—man—is reduced to matter. It is characteristic that Communism is so devoid of arguments that it has none to advance against its opponents in our Communist countries. It lacks argum

There are people who thirst for blood like tigers. Any man who has once tasted this unlimited power over the blood, over the body and spirit of a human creature like himself, a creature created in the same image and subject to the same law of Christ; any man who has tasted this power, this boundless opportunity to humiliate most bitterly another being made in the image of God — becomes the servant instead of the master of his own emotions. Tyranny is a habit. It can and does eventually develop i

The principle of compulsory service, embodied in the system of conscription, lias been the means by which modem dictators and military gangs have shackled their people after a coup d'état, and bound them to their own aggressive purposes. In view of the great service that conscription has rendered to tyranny and war, it is fundamentally shortsighted for any liberty-loving and peace-desiring peoples to maintain it as an imagined safeguard, lest they become the victims of the monster they have help

Laughter is an anarchic blasphemy. Tyrants are wise to fear it.

Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.

Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and the people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedoms.

Unchecked Corporate power leads to tyranny just like unchecked Government power.

In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the Pe

ABYSSOur country livesAmong the deadAnd dies among the livingSometimes.

The worst kind of tyrant was the one who once had been the victim.

When you attack a tyranny you must expect it to fight back.

When attempting at understanding and grasping the truth concerning horrors of tyranny and oppression...To experience these first hand is the only viable and substantiated acquired form of education....Thus exceeding any knowledge or insight attained within the confined four walls of a classroom

The grand castle in Cartigo, the capital city of Cierith, stood high against the full moon and cast a heavy shadow across the city. The forest surrounding the city whispered eerily throughout the night, and the townspeople bolted their doors shut in fear of the soldiers who patrolled the streets looking for an excuse to arrest someone. The man responsible for this tyranny, on the other hand, sat comfortably on his stolen throne and ruled the land with an iron fist.

The slaves of today will become the tyrants of tomorrow--the proletariat overthrows the hegemon to become the hegemon itself, only to be eventually overthrown by a proto-hegemon that will in turn lose its position. It is this dizzying cycle that keeps humanity chasing the tail it lost millennia ago

These definitions coincide with the terms which, since Greek antiquity, have been used to define the forms of government as the rule of man over man—of one or the few in monarchy and oligarchy, of the best or the many in aristocracy and democracy, to which today we ought to add the latest and perhaps most formidable form of such dominion, bureaucracy, or the rule by an intricate system of bureaux in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many, can be held responsible, an

If the world is unjust, get drunk, wave a sword, then cut off heads.

Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.

Bloomberg does not support the measure to silence the useless and maddening car alarm: he would rather impose himself on people than on mechanical devices.

The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.

No one rules if no one obeys