Best Tyrants Quotes

I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe. ~ Deborah Sampson

Still let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear
Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair;
A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
And offers for short life, eternal liberty. ~ Emily Bronte

We know what the birth of a revolution looks like: A student stands before a tank. A fruit seller sets himself on fire. A line of monks link arms in a human chain. Crowds surge, soldiers fire, gusts of rage pull down the monuments of tyrants, and maybe, sometimes, justice rises from the flames. ~ Nancy Gibbs

I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not freedom. Thus it seldom causes any public indignation when an enterprising tyrant claps down on one of his enemies. To most men it seems a natural proceeding. ~ H.L. Mencken

If not for tragedy, tyrants, and injustice, there would be nothing to awaken and inspire dormant heroes. There is always a balance. Always. ~ Steve Maraboli

What I like about a dog it stops people getting after you, they're not going to come round in the night. But they make the place stink because I might want to stay out a few days and when I get back I might want to stay in a few days and a dog can become a tyrant to you. ~ Caryl Churchill

Michael Moore: a man who never without an excuse for keeping murdering tyrants in power. But now he's supporting the man who bombed Milosevic into submission? How about an explanation, Mr Moore? ~ Andrew Sullivan

. . . Kings, aristocrats, tyrants, whoever they be, are slaves rebelling against the sovereign of the earth, which is the human race, and against the legislator of the universe, which is nature.

[trans. G. Rudé; A Proposed Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen]. ~ Maximilien Robespierre

He was one of that numerous and diverse legion of vulgarians, feeble miscreates, half-taught petty tyrants who make a point of instantly latching on to the most fashionable current idea, only to vulgarize it at once, to make an instant caricature of everything they themselves serve, sometimes quite sincerely. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Whether you have an abortion, what you put in your own body, with whom you have sex - these are not the affairs of the state. A government does not exist to control the citizens. When it does, it is a tyranny, and must be fought. The tree of liberty, Jefferson warned us, must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots. ~ Gore Vidal

A headline last year, after the death of Saddam Hussein, read: 'Tyrant is hanged'. My auntie looked at the newspaper and sobbed, 'Who's going to present "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"' ~ Steve Williams

The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or bombs. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that we really are the selfish tyrants that the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said we are? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it. ~ Peter Singer

So the villains aren't gay-hating Islamists or women killing tyrants, but actually us: an American Congress bent on the apocalypse. Don't we understand? Iranians love their children too. ~ Greg Gutfeld

A wicked tyrant is better than a wicked war. ~ Martin Luther

I've personally demanded that tyrants let their people go. I've tried to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, protect the elderly and infirm, and defend the needy from the aggressively greedy. I've led a blessed life. What a kick for a kid from the projects. ~ Gary Ackerman

O tyrant love, when held by you,
We may to prudence bid adieu.
[Fr., Amour! Amour! quand tu nous tiens
On peut bien dire, Adieu, prudence.] ~ Jean De La Fontaine

Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. ~ Patrick Henry

The most horrible thing is not a government that stages public executions, but a government that secretly disposes of its victims. ~ Lu Xun

Degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors. Time has proven that illustrious tyrants are succeeded by scoundrels. ~ Albert Einstein

The shortest way to change a radical into a conservative, a liberal into a tyrant, a man into a beast, is to give him power over his fellows. ~ Benjamin Tucker

Now you fear punishment and beg for your lives, so I will let you free, if not for any other reason so that you can see the difference between a Greek king and a barbarian tyrant, so do not expect to suffer any harm from me. A king does not kill messengers. ~ Alexander The Great

The universal methodology of the tyrant is always incrementalism. ~ Derek R. Audette

If I could I would!" is the maxim of tyrants. ~ Lamine Pearlheart

...One thing I have noticed, child, is that tyrants are the grandest romantics. They can burn a heretic alive once day, and compose a love sonnet the next. ~ Candace Fleming

I remember that throughout history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always ... whenever you are in doubt that that is God's way - the way the world is meant to be. Think of that and then try to do His way. ~ Jean Vanier

For a government,' said the god, 'is nothing but a mirror of your minds--tyrannical for tyrants--hypocritical for hypocrites --corrupt for those who are indifferent--extravagant and wasteful for the selfish--strong and honorable only toward honest men. ~ Talbot Mundy

We are naked, but we think we are not; we are wrong, but think we are correct. We are misled but we think we are properly guided. We think we have leaders but in reality we do not. What we have are tyrants. ~ Nilantha Ilangamuwa

The strength of a movement also relied on participation. Nonviolent campaigns succeeded or failed by the numbers of people willing to get in the way of injustice, or withdraw support from tyrants, or put their hands on the freedom plow and sow the seeds of change. ~ Rivera Sun

You are young and young your rule and you think that the tower in which you live is free from sorrow: from it have I not seen two tyrants thrown? The third, who now is king, I shall yet live to see him fall, of all three most suddenly, most dishonored. ~ Aeschylus

Recent school shootings have lured ill-informed Americans into a war on our Second Amendment guarantees, led by the nation's tyrants and their useful idiots ... The Second Amendment was given to us as protection against tyranny by the federal government and the Congress of the United States. ~ Walter E. Williams

The goal of tyrants is tyranny, and the goal of tyranny is tyranny. ~ Donald James

This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,Was once thought honest. ~ William Shakespeare

I firmly believed we should not march into Baghdad ... To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab
world against us and make a broken tyrant, into a latter-day Arab hero. ~ George H. W. Bush

By Oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us do or die! ~ Robert Burns

The old tyrants invoked the past; the new tyrants will invoke the future evolution has produced the snail and the owl; evolution can produce a workman who wants no more space than a snail, and no more light than an owl. The employer need not mind sending a Kaffir to work underground; he will soon become an underground animal, like a mole. He need not mind sending a diver to hold his breath in the deep seas; he will soon be a deep-sea animal. Men need not trouble to alter conditions, conditions will so soon alter men. The head can be beaten small enough to fit the hat. Do not knock the fetters off the slave; knock the slave until he forgets the fetters. ~ G.K. Chesterton

O slavish man! will you not bear with your own brother, who has God for his Father, as being a son from the same stock, and of the same high descent? But if you chance to be placed in some superior station, will you presently set yourself up for a tyrant? ~ Epictetus

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose. ~ Frederick Douglass

Verily, the index finger that testifies to the oneness of Allah Azzawajal in prayer, utterly rejects to write even an alphabet, endorsing the rule of the tyrant ~ Sayyid Qutb

There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted. ~ Christian Nestell Bovee

Populous cities are destroyed by earthquakes, and desolated by pestilence. Ambition is every where devoting its millions to incalculable calamity. Superstition, in a thousand shapes, is employed in brutalizing and degrading the human species, and fitting it to endure without a murmur the oppression of its innumerable tyrants. All this is abstractedly neither good nor evil because good and evil are words employed to designate that peculiar state of our own perceptions, resulting from the encounter of any object calculated to produce pleasure or pain. Exclude the idea of relation, and the words good and evil are deprived of import. ~ Christopher Hitchens