Tyranny Quotes - Page 19

• Marriage is a tyranny, a mortification of man's natural instincts. Man needs a multiplicity of relationships.

  Federico Fellini

  Men, Needs, Natural Instinct

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• It is in the nature of tyranny to deride the will of the people as the voice of the mob, and to denounce the cry for freedom as the roar of anarchy.

  William Safire

  Voice, People, Anarchy

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• The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also; only of a less intense kind.

  Herbert Spencer

  Government, Kind, Intense

  Herbert Spencer (2016). “Social Statics: Great Essays”, p.176, VM eBooks

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• We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism - something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfish, Rebel, Machines

  "The Selfish Gene". Book by Richard Dawkins, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1976.

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• Only tyrannies understand the power of art.

  Ronald Harwood

  Art

  Ronald Harwood (1997). “Taking Sides”, p.62, Dramatists Play Service Inc

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• Impatience can be very good by helping us not put up with tyranny, but it can distort our view of what is possible and how to bring about change. We have to cultivate patience so that our perception isn't distorted.

  Paul Ekman

  Views, Perception, Helping

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• The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Corruption

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• Yeah, it's legal in the United States. It's part of our Constitution. You know, the right to bear arms is because that's the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It's to protect yourself from the police.

  Ice T

  Police, Bears, United States

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• It is the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Ignorance, Tyranny Founding Fathers

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• The genius of Christian spirituality is to integrate [the] spirit of possession with the spirit of dispossession. The spirit of dispossession implies that all the good and delightful things of this world are never allowed to own, possess, or shackle me. Dispossession implies that I am always free, my own person, liberated from the tyranny that possession can easily exercise over us.

  John Powell

  Christian, Exercise, Genius

  John Powell (1995). “A Life-Giving Vision: How to Be a Christian in Today's World”, Thomas More Press

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• [My art is] capable of liberating man from the tyranny of the 'practical, rational world.'

  Salvador Dali

  Art, Men, World

  "Diary of a Genius". Book by Salvador Dali, p. 9, 1964.

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• We may well soon be subjected to anything that judges want to enforce.... The result will be an enforced inability of the states to pass laws that reflect the principled judgment of their own citizens....And as our Founders taught us so well, ...[that] will be the end of liberty and the establishment of tyranny in America.

  Alan Keyes

  Law, Taught Us, America

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• The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny.

  Michael Joseph Oakeshott

  Dream, Conjunctions, Ruling

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• In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Past, Government, Sometimes

  "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress". Book by Robert A. Heinlein, Ch. 22, 1966.

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• As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The American attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both.

  Chalmers Johnson

  Country, Government, Democracy

  Chalmers Johnson (2010). “Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope”, p.34, Metropolitan Books

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• But I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits by such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not much mind; this short life counts for too little in their eyes.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Christian, Short Life, Eye

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, G. D. H. Cole (2003). “On the Social Contract”, p.95, Courier Corporation

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• The tyranny of the ignoramuses is insurmountable and assured for all time.

  Albert Einstein

  All Time, Assured, Insurmountable

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• The loss of objectivity in moral thought does not lead to liberation. It leads to oppression. Secular ideologies preach liberty, but they practice tyranny.

  Nancy Pearcey

  Loss, Objectivity, Practice

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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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• If all the thought which had been expended on the construction of engines of agony and death - the modes of aggression and defence, the raising of armies, and the acquirement of those arts of tyranny and falsehood without which mixed multitudes could neither be led nor governed - had been employed to promote the true welfare and extend the real empire of man, how different would have been the present situation of human society!

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Art, Real, Army

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.269

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• Any practice of business which would dominate the country by its own selfish interest is a destruction of equality of opportunity. Government in business, except in emergency, is also a destruction of equal opportunity and the incarnation of tyranny through bureaucracy.

  Herbert Hoover

  Country, Selfish, Opportunity

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• ... professing myself moreover convinced that the general's unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.

  Jane Austen

  Attachment, Being Real, Unjust

  Jane Austen (2009). “Northanger Abbey”, p.157, Wild Jot Press

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• Freedom is necessary for two reasons. It's necessary for the individual, because the individual, no matter how good the society is, every individual has hopes, fears, ambitions, creative urges, that transcend the purposes of his society. Therefore we have a long history of freedom, where people try to extricate themselves from tyranny for the sake of art, for the sake of science, for the sake of religion, for the sake of the conscience of the individual - this freedom is necessary for the individual.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Art, Ambition, Two

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

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• The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people from religion; that amendment was written to protect religion from government tyranny. . . But now we're told our children have no right to pray in school. Nonsense. The pendulum has swung too far toward intolerance against genuine religious freedom. It is time to redress the balance.

  Ronald Reagan

  Religious, Children, School

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• Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.

  John Paul Stevens

  Majority, Shields, Anonymity

  "Court Defends Anonymity of Pamphleteers" by Joan Biskupic, www.sfgate.com. April 20, 1995.

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