quotations about tyrants and tyranny
What, in short, is the whole system of Europe towards America but an atrocious and insulting tyranny? One hemisphere of the earth, separated from the other by wide seas on both sides, having a different system of interests flowing from different climates, different soils, different productions, different modes of existence, and its own legal relations and duties, is made subservient to all the petty interests of the other, to their laws, their regulations, their passions and wars, and interdicted from social intercourse, from the interchange of mutual duties and comforts with their neighbors, enjoined on all men by the laws of nature. Happily these abuses of human rights are drawing to a close on both our continents, and are not likely to survive the present mad contest of the lions and tigers of the other.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Clement Caine, September 16, 1811
Tyranny produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in those two great types of the slave in classical times -- Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, the other meekness with its Christian graces.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
It is easier to repress the advances of tyranny at first, than to destroy it when once established.
SOLON
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is better to have one tyrant than a hundred; one may demand two-thirds of all you possess; the hundred will pick you to the bone.
THEODORE DWIGHT
attributed, Day's Collacon
Clever tyrants are never punished; they have always some slight shade of virtue: they support the laws before destroying them.
VOLTAIRE
Mérope
As usurpation is the exercise of power which another has a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to.
JOHN LOCKE
Second Treatise of Civil Government
Is there no tyrant but the crowned one?
JOSEPH CHENIER
Caius Gracchus
All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny. An heritable crown, or an heritable throne, or by what other fanciful name such things may be called, have no other significant explanation than that mankind are heritable property. To inherit a government, is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds.
THOMAS PAINE
The Rights of Man
Whenever kingship approaches tyranny it is near its end, for by this it becomes ripe for division, change of dynasty, or total destruction, especially in a temperate climate ... where men are habitually, morally and naturally free.
NICOLE ORESME
De Moneta
Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals, or made choices that they would call 'hard but necessary steps' for the good of their nation. We're all the hero of our own story.
JIM BUTCHER
Turn Coat
Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny.... They're organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
It is not to avoid cold or hunger that tyrants cover themselves with blood; and states decree the most illustrious rewards, not to him who catches a thief, but to him who kills an usurper.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
The power of art to outlast tyranny is very great. Authoritarian regimes may, for a short time, control the present, but we control the future. And that's what we have to remember -- that we have to keep creating that work that will tell the future what the present is like.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
"Rushdie Emphasizes the 'Power of Art to Outlast Tyranny'", Princeton Alumni Weekly, May 11, 2017
It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.
HANNAH ARENDT
The Human Condition
It is better to have one king than many tyrants.
CECILE RENARD
attributed, Day's Collacon