Despots Quotes - Page 4

• The single despot stands out in the face of all men, and says: I am the State: My will is law: I am your master: I take the responsibility of my acts: The only arbiter I acknowledge is the sword: If any one denies my right, let him try conclusions with me.

  Lysander Spooner

  Responsibility, Men, Law

  Lysander Spooner (1971). “The collected works of Lysander Spooner”

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• Putin is a despot, and he's a very good despot. And he will see things in a narrow way. What is good for Russia? That is what he will do. If that's represented by a move toward the Baltic, that would be very dangerous, but he would do it, on the assumption that he would ask himself the question: I am prepared to fight for Estonia. Is the United States? Is Germany? Is Britain, France?

  Marvin Kalb

  Moving, Fighting, Russia

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Egotism erects its center in itself; love places it out of itself in the axis of the universal whole. Love aims at unity, egotismat solitude. Love is the citizen ruler of a flourishing republic, egotism is a despot in a devastated creation.

  August Wilhelm von Schlegel

  Love, Axes, Solitude

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• The problem with Antigone is that she stood up to the despot Creon, but in such a way that she ended up dying. So she bought her defiance with her death. The real question I ended up asking was, "What would it mean for Antigone to have stood up to Creon and lived?" And the only way she could have lived is if she had had a serious social movement with her. If she arrived with a social movement to take down the despot, maybe it would have taken 18 days only, like in Egypt. It's really important to be able to re-situate one's rage and destitution in the context of a social movement.

  Judith Butler

  Real, Taken, Mean

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• The West doesn't have to love us. In fact, we should ask ourselves more often why people are so suspicious of us. After all, the West isn't a charity organization. How have we been perceived for centuries? As a huge, warlike realm ruled by despots - first by the czars and then Bolsheviks. Why should anyone have loved us? If we want to be accepted, we have to do something in return. And it's an art that we have yet to master.

  Vladislav Surkov

  Art, Organization, People

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Even enlightened despots don't make very good teachers.

  Marilyn Wallace

  Teacher, Enlightened, Very Good

  Marilyn Wallace (1992). “So Shall You Reap”, Bantam Dell Publishing Group

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• Muslims, scholars or not, are on the side of the oppressed and never on the side of the oppressors. Some scholars claim they don't do politics but if you listen to their statements in the Middle East or in other conferences, they support corrupt regimes and despots, such as as-Sissi.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Support, Middle East, Sides

  "Tariq Ramadan: My Absence Would Certainly Be The Most Powerful Speech I Have Ever Given At ISNA". The Islamic Monthly Interview, www.theislamicmonthly.com. August 14, 2014.

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• There are things to be afraid of - like extraordinary poverty and suffering beyond anything I've experienced, and climate change, despots - but there's really nothing to be afraid of when your job is an actor and you're at work, if you're in a place that is safe and full of respect and love, which we are.

  Gaby Hoffmann

  Jobs, Suffering, And Love

  "‘Transparent’ star Gaby Hoffmann on nudity, child acting, and what scares her". Interview with Alan Sepinwall, uproxx.com. September 22, 2016.

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• The bicycle is a vehicle of revolution. It can destroy the tyranny of the automobile as effectively as the printing press brought down despots of flesh and blood. The revolution will be spontaneous, the sum total of individual revolts like my own. It may have already begun.

  Daniel Behrman

  Blood, May, Flesh

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• I don't give a damn if you like Blackbeard. I don't care if you think he is an absolute despot. Do you believe me? If you do, I've done my work.

  Ray Stevenson

  Believe, Thinking, Giving

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• There is something very consistent about governance in the Arab world. Among the Arab countries today in which there is a modicum of internal stability, each is controlled by an Arafat-type figure - an anti-democratic strongman who is able to crush all challenges to his authority. Likewise, among those Arab countries that aren't ruled by a despot, the political dynamic is also consistent: In Lebanon, Iraq, and now Gaza, sectarian violence is the dominant form of political expression.

  Michael Totten

  Crush, Country, Expression

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• Woman, as Nature has created her and as she is currently reared by man, is his enemy and can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. She will be able to become his companion only when she has the same rights as he, when she is his equal in education and work.

  Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

  Men, Rights, Enemy

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• The lust of dominion innovates so imperceptibly that we become complete despots before our wanton abuse of power is perceived; the tyranny first exercised in the nursery is exhibited in various shapes and degrees in every stage of our existence.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Lust, Abuse, Degrees

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• Love sometimes elevates, creates new qualities, suspends the working of evil inclinations; but only for a day. Love, then, is an Oriental despot, whose glance lifts a slave from the dust, and then consigns him to it again.

  Sophie Swetchine

  Love, Dust, Evil

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• I think Sepp Blatter is in danger...or has reached a point now, where he is being mocked within the game. Whether he's getting too old, I don't know. But things can happen to people in power. Look at some of the despots in Africa... From a position of great power, he has uttered so many ridiculous statements that he is in danger of seriously damaging his credibility.

  Alex Ferguson

  Soccer, Football, Thinking

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• Imagination is the mightiest despot.

  Berthold Auerbach

  Imagination

  Berthold Auerbach (1874). “On the heights: a novel”, p.430

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• Power is the test. Some, once they have it, are content to buy the show of liking, and punish those who withhold it; then you have a despot. But some keep a true eye for how they seem to others, and care about it, which holds them back from much mischief.

  Mary Renault

  Eye, Care, Tests

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• The great conductor is always a despot by temperament and intractable in his ways. ... The artist is obliged to keep his laughter and tears to himself. If they want to emerge, in spite of himself, then he must hide them or unleash them in someone else.

  Nadia Boulanger

  Music, Laughter, Artist

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• At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.

  Stendhal

  Distance, Power, Government

  "La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma)". Book by Stendhal (Chapter 16), 1839.

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• all social relations exist and grow in the human mind. That one despot can rule over a million other men rests absolutely on their state of mind. They believe that he does; let them change their minds, and he does not.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Believe, Men, Perception

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1904). “Human Work”, p.39, Rowman Altamira

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• Historically speaking, the Christian religion is nothing but a Jewish sect... After the destruction of Judaism, the extinction of Christian slave morals must follow logically... Ah, the God of the deserts, that crazed, stupid, vengeful Asiatic despot with his power to make laws!

  Adolf Hitler

  Christian, Religious, Stupid

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• The end of despots is always odd?exhilarating to those who suffered their tyrannies, and to those who hold despotism in contempt, and anti-climatic at the same time, the discovery that these tyrants were petty, frightened men after all.

  Fouad Ajami

  Spring, Men, Discovery

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• We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.

  Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

  Dog, Cat, Hierarchy

  Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (2001). “The Tribe of Tiger”, p.71, Simon and Schuster

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• Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature's laws are more immutable than any despot's, yet to man's daily life they rarelyseem rigid, but permit him to relax with license in summer weather. He is not harshly reminded of the things he may not do.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Summer, Nature, Fate

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.41, Delphi Classics

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• Providence has given the United States the duty of extending Christian civilization. We come as ministering angels, not despots.

  Knute Nelson

  Christian, Angel, Civilization

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