Tyranny Quotes - Page 16

• It's not greed and ambition that makes wars--it's goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons, for liberation or manifest destiny, always against tyranny and always in the best interests of humanity. So far this war, we've managed to butcher some 10,000,000 people in the interest of humanity. The next war, it seems we'll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity.

  Paddy Chayefsky

  War, Ambition, Destiny

  Paddy Chayefsky (1995). “The screenplays”

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• Rome has betrayed itself. It knew the truth and chose violence, it knew humaneness and it chose tyranny.

  Friedrich Durrenmatt

  Betrayal, Rome, Betrayed

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• In Russia, whatever be the appearance of things, violence and arbitrary rule is at the bottom of them all. Tyranny rendered calm by the influence of terror is the only kind of happiness which this government is able to afford its people.

  Marquis de Custine

  Russia, Government, People

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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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• Most change initiatives either fail or fall far short of original (perhaps unrealistic) expectations. More often than not, resistance is cultural in nature, the result of what James O'Toole so aptly characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom."

  John Daly

  Fall, Expectations, Resistance

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• The checks and balances is a way to prevent government from either devolving into an autocratic tyranny or an autocratic mob mentality.

  Beau Willimon

  Government, Balance, Way

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• While the Second World War brought about untold misery and suffering, it was also a time when the world witnessed extraordinary bravery. Through the collective, heroic efforts of countless men and women, victory was claimed over tyranny and evil.

  Sam Kutesa

  War, Men, Evil

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• If you are too weak to give yourselves your own law, then a tyrant shall lay his yoke upon you and say: "Obey! Clench your teeth and obey!" And all good and evil shall be drowned in obedience to him.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Law, Tyrants, Evil

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• It is not our frowning battlements...or the strength our gallant and disciplined army? These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land... Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Army, Men, Land

  "Lincoln on Democracy" by Abraham Lincoln, G. S. Boritt, Fordham University Press, (p. 128), September 1, 2004.

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• The discussion which was made by Luther, Melancthon, and the other persons who preceded the Reformation, opened the eyes or the public; and they got rid of the delusions which had been spread by the Pope of Rome, and emancipated mankind from the spiritual tyranny they were under, and brought about the establishment of that religion which we now enjoy in this country.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Spiritual, Country, Eye

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• Where laws end, tyranny begins.

  William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham

  Law, Ends, Total War

  William Pitt (1st earl of Chatham.) (1839). “Correspondence, ed. by [W.S. Taylor and J.H. Pringle] the executors of his son John, earl of Chatham”, p.387

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• So, instead of spending my strength quarreling with the hand, I would strike for the heart of that great tyranny.

  Jane Swisshelm

  Strength, Money, Women

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• Every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny.

  William Blackstone

  Degrees, Assembly, Restraint

  Sir William Blackstone, John Fletcher Hargrave, George Sweet, Sir Richard Couch, William Newland Welsby (1852). “Commentaries on the Laws of England : in Four Books, with an Analysis of the Work”, p.126

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• Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Country, Law, Liberty

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• He who disguises tyranny, protection, or even benefits under the air and name of friendship reminds me of the guilty priest who poisoned the sacramental bread.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Friendship, Air, Names

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• Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.

  John le Carre

  Tyrants, House, Possession

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• Most fatal, most hateful of all things is bullying.... Sensual bullying of course is fairly easily detected. What is more dangerous is ideal bullying. Bullying people into what is ideally good for them.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Education, Bullying, People

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.8067, Delphi Classics

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• Pharisaism, obtuseness and tyranny reign not only in the homes of merchants and in jails; I see it in science, in literature, and among youth. I consider any emblem or label a prejudice.... My holy of holies is the human body, health, intellect, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute of freedoms, the freedom from force and falsity in whatever forms they might appear.

  Anton Chekhov

  Freedom, Inspiration, Home

  Letter to Alexei Pleshcheev, October 4, 1888.

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• Political correctness is just tyranny with manners. I wish for you the courage to be unpopular. Popularity is history's pocket change. Courage is history's true currency.

  Charlton Heston

  Political, Wish, Pockets

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• Today the manliest man would be ashamed to look into the eyes of the woman by his side and tell her that he is the master because he could knock her down with perfect ease, and break her bones with much greater facility than she could his. And yet, out of man's brute nature, out of that most ignoble in himself, has come his loudest assumption of superiority, his longest and lowest tyranny.

  Mary C. Ames

  Eye, Men, Perfect

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• All government, all exercise of power, no matter in what form, which is not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny.

  Anna Brownell Jameson

  Exercise, Government, Matter

  Anna Brownell Jameson (1877). “A commonplace book of thoughts, memories and fancies, original and selected”, p.54

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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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• America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic--the res- publica--has been settled, it is time to look after the res- privata,--the private state,--to see, as the Roman Senate charged its consuls, "ne quid res-PRIVATA detrimenti caperet," that the private state receive no detriment.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Freedom, America, Tyrants

  Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.50, David M Gross

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• Conquest, tyranny, treachery, and the clash of cultures bring about corrupt societies, and so does old age. Sometimes the five faces of corruption are visible at the same time.

  Robert Payne

  Age, Faces, Doe

  Robert Payne (1975). “The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America”, Praeger Publishers

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• Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Roots, People, Growth

  Thomas Jefferson, J. Jefferson Looney (2004). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: 1 October 1814 to 31 August 1815”, p.262, Princeton University Press

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