TYRANNY QUOTES
quotations about tyrants and tyranny
Up to now you have believed in the existence of tyrants. Well, you were mistaken. There are only slaves. Where none obeys, none commands.
ANSELME BELLEGARRIGUE
Anarchist Manifesto
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
C. S. LEWIS
God in the Dock
The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. it is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State
The tyranny that now exists is actual. That which may exist in the future is potential. If we are always to draw back from change with the thought that the change may be for the worse, then there is no hope at all of ever escaping injustice.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Prelude to Foundation
The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth.
BILL CLINTON
remarks at the dedication of the Thomas J. Dodd Archives and Research Center in Storrs, Connecticut, October 15, 1995
In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.
EUGENE V. DEBS
speech in Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918
Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.
BRUCE COVILLE
attributed, Edutocracy: My Time Behind Public Education's Iron Curtain
No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 15, 1858
The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness.... This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.
PLATO
The Republic
The Founding Fathers designed the constitution to prevent some Americans from exercising tyranny. Alert to the classical examples they knew, the decline of ancient Greece and Rome into oligarchy and empire, they established the rule of law, checks and balances, and regular elections as the means of preserving the new republic. Thus far, it has worked. But it need not work forever.
TIMOTHY SNYDER
"Donald Trump and the New Dawn of Tyranny", Time, May 3, 2017
Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn "reasonable" and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to 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
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
JOHN BRADSHAW
inscription on his tombstone
The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.
WOLE SOYINKA
The Man Died
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.
AESOP
"The Wolf and the Lamb", Aesop's Fables
Can we identify an epistemology of tyranny? Is there a mechanism by which a certain kind of cognitive commitment to a political or moral theory might cause someone willingly to harm others in its pursuit; prevent them from seeing the harm they are doing, or even make invisible to them the data that would demand a revision of their beliefs to better reflect human experience and lead to outcomes more aligned with their stated goals? Such fundamental questions concern our ability to form knowledge and change their opinions and so both depend on, and reveal, much about human nature. And since human nature doesn't change, we shouldn't be too surprised to find that history provides a useful guide in answering them.
ROBIN KOERNER
"Political Scientism: Beware the Enlightened Ones", The Moderate Voice, May 5, 2017
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
WILLIAM PITT
speech, November 18, 1783
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to W. S. Smith, November 13, 1787
The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. But killing one tyrant only makes way for worse, unless the people have sense, spirit and honesty enough to establish and support a constitution guarded at all points against the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many.
JOHN ADAMS
A Defence of the Constitutions of Government
The preservation of liberty is more about the way we hold our beliefs than the beliefs that we hold. Tyranny is less a political failure than it is an epistemological one.
ROBIN KOERNER
"Political Scientism: Beware the Enlightened Ones", The Moderate Voice, May 5, 2017
When the shepherd is a wolf, the flock becomes only so much meat.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino