tyranny quotes

For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.

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.

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

In 1979, Iranians carried out an illegitimate act: They overthrew a tyrant that the United States had imposed and supported, and moved on an independent path, not following U.S. orders.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

I happen to be a big fan of Western civilization; I think it beats the hell out of tyranny and starvation.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant – Moammar Gaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world – including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents.

Beware the tyranny of the weak. They just suck you dry.

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

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‚within the limits of the law‘ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Corruption is just another form of tyranny.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Although we resolutely supported the armed struggle against Batista’s tyranny, we were, on principle, opposed to any terrorist action that could cause the death of innocent people.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

It’s not tyranny we desire; it’s a just, limited, federal government.

A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

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

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

From behind the Iron Curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its surface is hard.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.