Despotism Quotes - Page 7

• It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them. I do not question that, in an age of instruction and equality like our own, sovereigns might more easily succeed in collecting all political power into their own hands and might interfere more habitually and decidedly with the circle of private interests than any sovereign of antiquity could ever do.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Character, Men, Hands

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2015). “Democracy in America - Vol. I. and II.”, p.760, Read Books Ltd

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• I'm less influenced by any of [Karl] Marx's ideas today than I've ever been in my life, and most significantly Marx's theory of historical materialism, which I think is virtually a debris of despotism.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, Ideas, Historical

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• You can't build politics on love. People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos.

  Frank Herbert

  People, Too Much, Chaos

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Dune Messiah”, p.155, Penguin

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• It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected, possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.

  Thomas Paine

  Government, Political, Politics

  Thomas Paine (1824). “The Political Writings of Thomas Paine: Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs in the American Revolution : to which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Life”, p.186

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• After many unhappy experiments in the direction of an ideal Republic, it was found that what may be described as a Despotism tempered by Dynamite provides, on the whole, the most satisfactory description of ruler - an autocrat who dares not abuse his autocratic power.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Abuse, Unhappy, Democracy

  W. S. Gilbert, Ian C. Bradley (2016). “The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan”, p.1049, Oxford University Press

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• The foremost or indeed sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Believe, Men, Order

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1847). “Democracy in America”

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• The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or limited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same [whether] in a majority of a popular assembly; an aristocratic council; or oligarchical junto and a single emperor - equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody and in every respect diabolical.

  John Adams

  Political, Arbitrary, Fundamentals

  John Adams' Letter to Thomas Jefferson, founders.archives.gov. November 13, 1815.

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• If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, they would cut each other's throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.

  Voltaire

  Peace, Cutting, Two

  Voltaire (2016). “Treatise on Toleration”, p.22, Penguin UK

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• My History of the Jesuits is in four volumes.... This society has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.

  John Adams

  Historical, Mind, Progress

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.229

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• It is certain that despotism ruins individuals by preventing them from producing wealth much more than by depriving them of what they have already produced; it dries up the source of riches, while it usually respects acquired property. Freedom, on the contrary, produces far more goods than it destroys; and the nations which are favored by free institutions invariably find that their resources increase even more rapidly than their taxes.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Riches, Ruins, Wealth

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• Europeans have sometimes been beguiled by a despotism that comes concealed in the seductive form of an ideal – as it did in the cases of Hitler and Stalin. This fact may remind us that the possibility of despotism is remote neither in space nor in time.

  Kenneth Minogue

  Space, Seductive, May

  Kenneth Minogue (2000). “Politics: A Very Short Introduction”, p.17, Oxford Paperbacks

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• A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  War, Long, Triumph

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2012). “Democracy in America”, p.159, University of Chicago Press

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• When the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Cutting, Government, Tree

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  Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Rights, Order, Support

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1990). “Democracy in America”

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• Freemasonry teaches not merely temperance, fortitude, prudence, justice, brotherly love, relief, and truth, but liberty, equality, and fraternity, and it denounces ignorance, superstition, bigotry, lust tyranny and despotism.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Ignorance, Justice, Lust

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• We look back, already, with astonishment, at the daring outrages committed by despotism, on the reason and rights of man; we look forward with joy, to the period, when it shall be despoiled of all its usurpations, and bound forever in the chains, with which it had loaded its miserable victims.

  James Madison

  Men, Rights, Joy

  James Madison (1867). “1829-1836”, p.467

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• The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Fighting, Men, Deception

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• As it was 189 years ago, so today the cause of America is a revolutionary cause. And I am proud this morning to salute you as fellow revolutionaries. Neither you nor I are willing to accept the tyranny of poverty, nor the dictatorship of ignorance, nor the despotism of ill health, nor the oppression of bias and prejudice and bigotry. We want change. We want progress. We want it both abroad and at homeand we aim to get it.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Morning, Ignorance, Bias And Prejudice

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1967). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966”, p.830, Best Books on

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• Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it.

  James Madison

  Opposites, Liberty, Assuming

  "Rights of Man". Book by Thomas Paine, 1791.

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• It has taken seas of blood to drown the idol of despotism, but the English do not think they bought their laws too dearly.

  Voltaire

  Taken, Thinking, Blood

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• Nothing renders a nation so despicable as religious despotism.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Religious, Despicable, Nations

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• Despotism, which we regard with abhorrence, is rather too plausible in decaying feudal, agrarian, pastoral societies. That's why we must expect to have many a defeat before we'll have an ultimate victory in this contest with Communism.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Victory, Defeat, Communism

  "The Mike Wallace Interview". www.hrc.utexas.edu. April 27, 1958.

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• The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Scylla, Anarchy, Rich

  'A Defence of Poetry' (written 1821, published 1840)

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• It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. ...And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Men, Average, Liberty

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (1995). “The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, Gramercy

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• Formerly, when a king died at Versailles the reign of his successor was immediately announced by the cry: "The king is dead, long live the king", in order to make it understood that despotism is immortal! Now an entire people, moved by a sublime instinct, cried: Long live the Republic! to teach the universe that tyranny died with the tyrant.

  Maximilien Robespierre

  Kings, Order, Tyrants

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