Tyranny Quotes - Page 23

• Well now," the scholar went on, "I'm just an old fuddy-duddy who could use a tan, so you needn't grant my opinion any authority, but I consider the queendom lucky that a handful of Milliners and their children lived incognito among the population during Redd's tyranny.

  Frank Beddor

  Children, Population, Lucky

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• William: "I'm sure we can all pull together, sir." Vetinari: "Oh, I do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.

  Terry Pratchett

  Men, Together, Cooperation

  "The Truth". Book by ‎Terry Pratchett, 2000.

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• As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they're convinced that they'll eventually escape to some resort in the sky where lifeguards are superfluous and the pool never closes. Moreover, the faithful are usually willing to risk their skins in whatever military adventure their government may currently be promoting.

  Tom Robbins

  Military, Believe, Adventure

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.356, Bantam

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• Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny; they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Revolution, Rebellious, Rebellion

  Man and Superman (1903) "The Revolutionist's Handbook," foreword

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• Republican despotism is more fertile in acts of tyranny, because everyone has a hand in it.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Hands, Revolution, Republican

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• The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Power, Men, Atheism

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• Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter.

  Erich Fromm

  Tyrants, Political, Feelings

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.135, Open Road Media

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• Of all the tyrannies that effect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.

  Thomas Paine

  Religion, World, Christianity

  Thomas Paine, Philip Sheldon Foner (1993). “The life and major writings of Thomas Paine”, Citadel Pr

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• And of all plagues with which mankind are curst, Ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst.

  Daniel Defoe

  Doubt, Atheism, Worst

  'The True-Born Englishman' (1701) pt. 2, l. 299

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• We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. . . . The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.

  E. B. White

  Loyalty, Fighting, Tolerance

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.92, Cornell University Press

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• Tyranny is for the worst of treasons.

  Lord Byron

  Military, Worst

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• If we dwell in spirit, or Soul, we are living in happiness, for Soul is a happy entity. It is seldom anything else. When the mind presses in on it too strongly, however, it withdraws and leaves the body under the tyranny of mind.

  Paul Twitchell

  Inspiration, Soul, Mind

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• Where once a tyrant had to wish that his subjects had but one common neck that he might strangle them all at once, all he has to do now is to 'educate the people' so that they will have but one common mind to delude.

  Richard Mitchell

  School, Tyrants, People

  Richard Mitchell (1987). “The leaning tower of Babel and other affronts by the Underground grammarian”, Fireside

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• Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Education, School, Government

  Speech in the House of Commons, June 15, 1874.

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• The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance.

  Libba Bray

  Dream, Xenophobia, Book

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• Do not hold the delusion that your advancement is accomplished by crushing others.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Crush, Competition, Advancement

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• If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.

  Samuel Adams

  Giving Up, Mistake, Men

  John White, Cecil Calvert Baltimore (2d Baron), Charles Hudson, Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson, Massachusetts Historical Society (1904). “The planting of colonies in New England”

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• No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate).

  Frederic Bastiat

  Order, Justice, Liberty

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.19, Cosimo, Inc.

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• A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks.

  John C. Calhoun

  Powerful, Government, People

  John C. Calhoun “The Works of John C. Calhoun Volume 2”, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

  Winston Churchill

  War, Moving, Fall

  Hansard 18 June 1940, col. 60

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• It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy. It is too easy. History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly at first, then stealthily, and brazenly in the end.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Rights, Light, Political

  Davis v. United States, 328 U.S. 582, 597, 1946.

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• ...regrettable as it may seem to the idealist, the experience of history provides little warrant for the belief that real progress, and the freedom that makes progress possible, lies in unification. For where unification has been able to establish unity of ideas it has usually ended in uniformity, paralysing the growth of new ideas. And where the unification has merely brought about an artificial or imposed unity, its irksomeness has led through discord to disruption.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Real, Lying, Ideas

  B.H. Liddell Hart (2015). “Why Don't We Learn from History?”, p.76, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Men, Justice, Liberty

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, p. 99, 1960.

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• Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.

  Eric Hoffer

  Sheep, People, Humanity

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Gun, America, Government

  "Know Your Lawmaker". Guns magazine, p. 4, February 1960.

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