Tyranny Quotes

“A city which belongs to just one man is no true city”
― Sophocles, Antigone

“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.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Just because you have stolen someone's heart, luckily owned and occupied as a home, doesn't give you the audacity to enforce hurtful policies.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Under tyranny it is right to be a rebel!”
― Robert Fanney

“The government you elect is the government you deserve.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“There is a tyranny in the womb of every Utopia.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel

“When enough people understand reality, tyrants can literally be ignored out of existence. They can't ever be voted out of existence.”
― Larken Rose

“The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“And I'll close by saying this. Because anti-Semitism is the godfather of racism and the gateway to tyranny and fascism and war, it is to be regarded not as the enemy of the Jewish people, I learned, but as the common enemy of humanity and of civilisation, and has to be fought against very tenaciously for that reason, most especially in its current, most virulent form of Islamic Jihad. Daniel Pearl's revolting murderer was educated at the London School of Economics. Our Christmas bomber over Detroit was from a neighboring London college, the chair of the Islamic Students' Society. Many pogroms against Jewish people are being reported from all over Europe today as I'm talking, and we can only expect this to get worse, and we must make sure our own defenses are not neglected. Our task is to call this filthy thing, this plague, this—this pest, by its right name; to make unceasing resistance to it, knowing all the time that it's probably ultimately ineradicable, and bearing in mind that its hatred towards us is a compliment, and resolving (some of the time, at any rate) to do a bit more to deserve it. Thank you.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy.”
― Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

“He said to people: you’re free. And they said hooray, and then he showed them what freedom costs and they called him a tyrant and, as soon as he’d been betrayed, they milled around a bit like barn-bred chickens who’ve seen the big world outside for the first time, and then they went back into the warm and shut the door...”
― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

“Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.”
― Noah Webster

“[T]he mob is the most ruthless of tyrants;”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ

“Let them shoot us in the head,
My blood will grow roots
and will blossom.”
― Visar Zhiti, The Condemned Apple: Selected Poetry (Green Integer)

“The paralysis of potential is essential to the manufacturing of victims.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What's more, there are whole races who believe it!”
― Erich Maria Remarque, Flotsam

“Tyranny anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere.”
― Alex Storozynski, The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution

“Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn “reasonable” and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to stop and speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.”
― Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

“To try to reform all the power structures at once would leave us with no power structure to use in our project. In any case, we will be able to see that absolute moral renewal could be attempted only by an absolute power and that a tyrannous force such as this must destroy the whole moral life of man, not renew it.”
― Michael Polanyi, Meaning

“In reality, though, the first thing to ask of history is that it should point
out to us the paths of liberty. The great lesson to draw from revolutions is
not that they devour humanity but rather that tyranny never fails to generate
them.”
― Pierre Elliot Trudeau

“Our forefathers were heroes. But why were they heroes? Because they fought for democracy. They fought for the life and liberty of the Filipino people. They fought for our independence, our freedom. They fought against tyranny, totalitarianism, and dictatorship. They fought for us and that is something we must be grateful for.”
― Yanan Melo, Naaalala Niyo Ba Ang Noli Me Tangere?

“The only men ruthless enough to fight against tyranny were themselves inclined to it.”
― Susan Wise Bauer, The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome

“Don't be a zombie for anyone, if your oppressor likes zombies, cinemas are not located in mars.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned — would never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

“Freedom of speech is detestable only to those who have no desire to think for themselves.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“It seemed to me that all things were possible on the island, all tyrannies and cruelties, though in small; and if, in despite of what was possible, we lived at peace with another, surely this was proof that certain laws unknown to us held sway, or else that we had been following the promptings of our hearts all this time, and our hearts had not betrayed us.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Foe

“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 helped to preserve.”
― B.H. Liddell Hart, The Revolution in Warfare.

“I believe that love and peace are the right way to confront tyranny.”
― Nihad Sirees, The Silence and the Roar

“Demon” means “knowledge” in Greek. “Science” means “knowledge” in Latin. A jurisdictional dispute is exposed, even if we look no further.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“If political authority is not limited, the division of powers, ordinarily the guarantee of freedom, becomes a danger and a scourge.”
― Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments