Tyrants Quotes

• 

  The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Strength, Wisdom, Veterans Day

  Letter to William Stephens Smith, 13 Nov. 1787

  227 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Law, Names, Justice

  289 Copy quote

• Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Men, Doors, Land

  Abraham Lincoln, Bob Blaisdell (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Book of Quotations”, p.3, Courier Corporation

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.

  Maximilien Robespierre

  Lying, People, Secret

  "Oeuvres". Volume 2, p. 253, 1840.

  255 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant ... must not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves.

  Aesop

  Hands, Evil, Politics

  Aesop (1913). “Æsop's fables: an anthology of the fabulists of all countries”, J. M. Dent & Sons, ltd.

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

  Aesop

  Tyranny, Pretext

  Aesop (2015). “Aesop's Fables”, p.18, Aesop

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

  Albert Camus

  Peace, War, People

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.101, Vintage

  51 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you stop a dictator, there are always risks. But there are greater risks in not stopping a dictator.

  Margaret Thatcher

  War, Risk, Stopping

  17 Copy quote

• Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress?

  J. K. Rowling

  Ideas, People, Dumbledore Book

  "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". Book by J. K. Rowling, July 16, 2005.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is more cruel than a tyrant's ear?

  Juvenal

  Ears, Tyranny

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 825, Satires, IV, line 86, 1922.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves.

  Jose Rizal

  Slave

  20 Copy quote

• Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible noble purpose, but to plain, naked human evil.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Evil, Effort

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.136, Penguin

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• If there is no struggle, there is no progress....This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

  Frederick Douglass

  Struggle, Progress, Demand

  Speech, Canandaigua, N.Y., 4 Aug. 1857

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

  Edmund Burke

  Kings, Principles, Rebel

  'Reflections on the Revolution in France' (1790) p. 116

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• The just man having a firm grasp of his intentions, neither the heated passions of his fellow men ordaining something awful, nor a tyrant staring him in the face, will shake in his convictions.

  Horace

  Passion, Men, Awful

  'Odes' bk. 3, no. 3, l. 1

  9 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail.

  Samuel Adams

  Country, Ignorance, People

  Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773”

  277 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail. The religion and public liberty of a people are intimately connected; their interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this reason, it is always observable, that those who are combin'd to destroy the people's liberties, practice every art to poison their morals.

  Samuel Adams

  Country, Art, Fall

  Samuel Adams (1906). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773”

  101 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most effective means of preventing tyranny is to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, People, Giving

  Thomas Jefferson (1900). “The Life and Writings of ...”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

  Frederick Douglass

  Freedom, Rights, Liberty

  Frederick Douglass (2013). “Selected Addresses of Frederick Douglass”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

  214 Copy quote

  Show source

• A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Ambitious, Fool, Tyranny Of The Majority

  Speaking to the Roman Senate, as recorded by Sallust in The Catiline War (c. 40 b.c.). This quotation is a favorite of CIA counterintelligence officers.

  113 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mob is the mother of tyrants.

  Diogenes

  Mother, Motherhood

  37 Copy quote

• Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Libertarian Party, Thought Provoking, Political

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.94, Beacon Press

  155 Copy quote

  Show source

• The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.

  Adolf Hitler

  Fear, Truth, Rise To Power

  135 Copy quote
• 

  Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.

  William Penn

  God, Men

  Attributed in "I Quote" by Virginia Ely, (p. 189), 1947.

  122 Copy quote

  Show source

• Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

  George Orwell

  Color, Atrocities Committed, Patriotism

  55 Copy quote