Tyranny Quotes - Page 34

• Imprisonment in the contemporary is the worst of all intellectual tyrannies.

  Weston La Barre

  Intellectual, Worst, Contemporary

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• The seeds of freedom . . . have now been scattered where despotism and tyranny ranked and ruled, will be watered by the enlivening dews of God's clemency, till the reapers abolitionists shall shout the harvest home.

  Henry McNeal Turner

  Home, Dew, Harvest

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• I never imagined when I wrote my first book on Strauss that the unscrupulous elite that he elevates would ever come so close to political power, nor that the ominous tyranny of the wise would ever come so close to being realised in the political life of a great nation like the United States. But fear is the greatest ally of tyranny.

  Shadia Drury

  Wise, Book, Being Real

  "Noble lies and perpetual war: Leo Strauss, the neocons, and Iraq". Interview with Danny Postel, www.opendemocracy.net. October 15, 2003.

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• Apathy is the slow poison coursing through the body politic that paves the way to tyranny.

  Laurence Overmire

  Apathy, Poison, Body

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• There is no defence against an evil which only the victims and the perpetrators know exists.

  Christopher X. Brodeur

  Evil, Denial, Victim

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• Traditionally, Africans hate governments. They hate tyranny.

  George Ayittey

  Hate, Government

  "Africa's cheetahs versus hippos". TED Talk, www.ted.com. June 2007.

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• I shall never cease to marvel at the way we beg for love and tyranny.

  Francine du Plessix Gray

  Way, Cease

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• The power of the state is measured by the power that men surrender to it.

  Felix Morley

  Men, Tyrants, Surrender

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• Bound as our lives are to the tyranny of time, it is through what we know of history that we are delivered from our bonds and escape - into time.

  A. L. Rowse

  History, Knows, Our Lives

  A. L. Rowse (2016). “The Use of History”, p.24, Routledge

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• The principle of compulsory service, embodied in the system of conscription, lias been the means by which modem dictators and military gangs have shackled their people after a coup d'état, and bound them to their own aggressive purposes. In view of the great service that conscription has rendered to tyranny and war, it is fundamentally shortsighted for any liberty-loving and peace-desiring peoples to maintain it as an imagined safeguard, lest they become the victims of the monster they have helped to preserve.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Military, War, Mean

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• Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones, And tottering empires rush by their own weight.

  John Armstrong

  Thrones, Weight, Empires

  John Armstrong (2011). “John Armstrong's The Art of Preserving Health: Eighteenth-century Sensibility in Practice”, p.82, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

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• Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. You can join the Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep.

  Ernest Gellner

  Strong, Party, Sheep

  Ernest Gellner (1994). “Conditions of liberty: civil society and its rivals”, Hamish Hamilton Ltd

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• The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise ... economics is a form of brain damage.

  Hazel Henderson

  Brain, Damage, Problem

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• There isn't much point arguing about the word "libertarian." It would make about as much sense to argue with an unreconstructed Stalinist about the word "democracy" - recall that they called what they'd constructed "peoples' democracies." The weird offshoot of ultra-right individualist anarchism that is called "libertarian" here happens to amount to advocacy of perhaps the worst kind of imaginable tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny. If they want to call that "libertarian," fine; after all, Stalin called his system "democratic." But why bother arguing about it?

  Noam Chomsky

  Democracy, Want, Libertarian

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• But, that’s the whole point of corporatization - to try to remove the public from making decisions over their own fate, to limit the public arena, to control opinion, to make sure that the fundamental decisions that determine how the world is going to be run - which includes production, commerce, distribution, thought, social policy, foreign policy, everything - are not in the hands of the public, but rather in the hands of highly concentrated private power. In effect, tyranny unaccountable to the public.

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Fate, Hands

  "On Microsoft and Corporate Control of the Internet". Interview with Anna Couey, chomsky.info. May 6, 1998.

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• [What Hayek] does not see, or will not admit, [is] that a return to "free" competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State. The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them. Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly, but in practice that is where it has led, and since the vast majority of people would far rather have State regimentation than slumps and unemployment, the drift towards collectivism is bound to continue if popular opinion has any say in the matter.

  George Orwell

  Mean, Winning, Practice

  George Orwell (2003). “Orwell: The Observer Years”, Atlantic Books (UK)

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• We have before us the fiendishness of business competition and the world war, passion and wrongdoing, antagonism between classes and moral depravity within them, economic tyranny above and the slave spirit below.

  Karl Barth

  Business, War, Passion

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• The essential psychological requirement of a free society is the willingness on the part of the individual to accept responsibility for his life. - Edith Packer
  When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny.

  Thomas Paine

  Responsibility, Government, People

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• There were rules in the monastery, but the Master always warned against the tyranny of the law. 'Obedience keeps the rules,' he would say. 'Love knows when to break them.'

  Anthony de Mello

  Law, Obedience, Break

  Anthony De Mello (2012). “One Minute Wisdom”, p.66, Image

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• Behind this judicial wall of separation there is a tyranny of lies that will fall... I say to you, my friends, let it fall!

  Fob James

  Wall, Lying, Fall

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• The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Animal, Rights, Hands

  An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation ch. 17 (1789)

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• My brothers, seek counsel of one another, for therein lies the way out of error and futile repentance. The wisdom of the many is your shield against tyranny. For when we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.

  Khalil Gibran

  Wisdom, Brother, Lying

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• People get good gigs because they stand up....You don't get picked. Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.

  Seth Godin

  People, Mind Your Own Business, Gigs

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• There is no way of influencing men so powerfully as by means of the women. These should therefore be our chief study; we should insinuate ourselves into their good opinion, give them hints of emancipation from the tyranny of public opinion, and of standing up for themselves; it will be an immense relief to their enslaved minds to be freed from any one bond of restraint, and it will fire them the more, and cause them to work for us with zeal, without knowing that they do so; for they will only be indulging their own desire of personal admiration.

  Adam Weishaupt

  Mean, Men, Knowing

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• The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the 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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