Quotes about Tyranny

Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.

Thomas Jefferson

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Thomas Jefferson

Of all human ills, greatest is fortune's wayward tyranny.

Sophocles

Bad law is the worst sort of tyranny.

Edmund Burke

The right to vote is a *consequence*, not a primary cause, of a free social system -- and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.

Ayn Rand

It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

Alexander Hamilton

Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.

Helen Keller

No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.

Hannah Arendt

I believe that God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom. And even when that desire is crushed by tyranny for decades, it will rise again.

George W. Bush

One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.

Bertrand Russell

I said 'George, if you want to end world tyranny, you have to stay up later.' Nine o'clock and Mr. Excitement here is in bed, leaving me to watch 'Desperate Housewives' with Lynne Cheney. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife.

Laura Bush

Tyranny Absolves all faith; and who invades our rights, However his own commence, can never be But an usurper.

Henry Brooke

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.

Bertrand Russell

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

James Fenimore Cooper

I support freeing Iraqi's from tyranny. I came here to show there are American who support what bush is doing in Iraq.

Ryan Stiles

Freedom is humankind's greatest, most ennobling idea, and its surest antidote to terror and tyranny.

Richard Tofel

It was judicial tyranny. If the constitution is changed, it can only be changed by a vote of the people.

Kris Mineau

Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalised medium of reason, that's all we have between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feelings.

Felix Frankfurter

Eminent domain abuse denies the people who the Framers cared most about the right to create wealth through property ownership. This assault on our constitution not only denies them this right, but by forcing them out, it in effect creates other depressed areas that eventually will be claimed by the powerful for their own selfish gain. We must resist such tyranny at every turn.

Mychal Massie

Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny; Plato, a privilege of nature; Theophrastus, a silent cheat; Theocritus, a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom; Aristotle, that it was better than all the letters of recommendation in the world; Homer, that it was a glorious gift of nature; and Ovid, that it was favor bestowed by the gods.

Francis Quarles

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

Charles de Montesquieu

Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

Victor Hugo

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Thomas Paine

I often wish . . . that I could rid the world of the tyranny of facts. What are facts but compromises? A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease.

William Bliss Carman

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

Norman Mailer

If the newspapers are useful in overthrowing tyrants, it is only to establish a tyranny of their own.

James Fenimore Cooper

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

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

As freedom-loving people across the globe hope for an end to tyranny, we will never forget the enormous suffering of the Holocaust.

Bob Beauprez

Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.

Terry Pratchett

There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.

Reinhold Niebuhr

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Lord Acton

He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle to steady his fellow countrymen and hearten those Europeans upon whom the long dark night of tyranny had descended.

Edward R. Murrow

Then hail! thou noble conqueror! That, when tyranny oppressed, hewed for our fathers from the wild. A land wherein to rest.

Mary Elizabeth Hewitt

The powerful emotional connection between Roosevelt and Churchill and how they confronted tyranny and terror is an incredibly contemporary story that yields important lessons for leaders today on a personal, political, and diplomatic level.

Jon Meacham

Tyranny and anarchy are never far asunder.

Jeremy Bentham

It's unprecedented, a shameful act in my opinion. That's evidence of a majority that's been in power way too long. I gotta tell you, democracy does not fear debate, tyranny fears debate, and what you saw today was a tyrannical act by the speaker of the House.

Anthony O'donnell

'God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan,' ... 'And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq' . . . And I did.' .

Nabil Shaath

The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it.

John Ray

Make no mistake about it: Operation Desert Storm truly was a victory of good over evil, of freedom over tyranny, of peace over war.

Dan Quayle

It seems to me there's this tyranny that's not accidental or incidental, to make women feel compelled to look like somebody they're not. I think the effort is being made to get us to turn our time and attention to this instead of important political issues.

Eve Ensler

We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.

Elizabeth Drew

It's totally unfounded to assume that as it is called a communist party, the CPC will undoubtedly pursue the road of tyranny at home and expansion abroad adopted by the CCCP under Brezhnev.

Zheng Bijian