Tyrants Quotes - Page 29

• What I like about a dog it stops people getting after you, they're not going to come round in the night. But they make the place stink because I might want to stay out a few days and when I get back I might want to stay in a few days and a dog can become a tyrant to you.

  Caryl Churchill

  Dog, Night, People

  Caryl Churchill (2008). “Plays Four”, Nick Hern Books

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• In the long run even the most despotic governments with all their brutality and cruelty are no match for ideas. Eventually the ideology that has won the support of the majority will prevail and cut the ground from under the tyrant's feet. Then the oppressed many will rise in rebellion and overthrow their masters.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Running, Cutting, Government

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution: The Economist”, p.264, VM eBooks

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• Notwithstanding my experiments with electricity the thunderbolt continues to fall under our noses and beards; and as for the tyrant, there are a million of us still engaged at snatching away his sceptre.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Fall, Beard, Noses

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• Tyranny has no need of arts or sciences, for its policy, which is very shallow and without any refinement, only consists in shedding blood.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Art, Blood, Needs

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• "We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim..." Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. "Rats," he said; "stinking curs. They are all running away."

  Evelyn Waugh

  Running, Art, Morning

  "Black Mischief". Book by Evelyn Waugh, 1932.

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• Truth is a tyrant-the only tyrant to whom we can give our allegiance. The service of truth is a matter of heroism.

  John F. Kennedy

  Truth, Science, Giving

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• There is no tyrant as merciless as pain.

  Stephen King

  Pain

  Stephen King (2008). “Duma Key: A Novel”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

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• I firmly believed we should not march into Baghdad ...To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab
  world against us and make a broken tyrant, into a latter-day Arab hero.

  George H. W. Bush

  Hero, Iraq, Broken

  George H. W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft (2011). “A World Transformed”, p.464, Vintage

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• A man like me cannot live without a hobby-horse, a consuming passion - in Schiller's words a tyrant. I have found my tyrant, and in his service I know no limits. My tyrant is psychology. It has always been my distant, beckoning goal and now since I have hit upon the neuroses, it has come so much the nearer.

  Sigmund Freud

  Horse, Passion, Men

  Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Fliess (1957). “The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Letters, Drafts and Notes to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1902”

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• A great nation like the United States has many and varied interests, and we need both to do business with tyrants and to engage constantly in multilateral diplomacy.

  Elliott Abrams

  United States, Needs, Diplomacy

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• The president, who finds so much to complain about in other areas of the world, apparently saw nothing wrong in recognizing a Communist regime that has killed more people in its short history of control over the teeming millions of that great country than any other collection of dictators or tyrants in the history of the world.

  Barry Goldwater

  Country, War, People

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• It seems to us unwise to have insisted on teaching geometry to the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, in order to make him a good king, but from Plato's point of view it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that without mathematics no true wisdom is possible.

  Bertrand Russell

  Kings, Plato, Teaching

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition”, p.95, Routledge

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• It is asserted by most respectable writers upon our government, that a well-regulated militia, composed of the yeomanry of the country, have ever been considered the bulwark of a free people. Tyrants have never placed any confidence on a militia composed of freemen.

  John L. DeWitt

  Country, Government, People

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• It is outrageous that the Queen has invited royal tyrants to celebrate her diamond jubilee.

  Peter Tatchell

  Queens, Diamond Jubilee, Royal

  "Guess who's coming to dinner? Anger over Queen's jubilee bash guest list" by Caroline Davies, www.theguardian.com. May 17, 2012.

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• I remember when I first started having these interpretations of these images, these clichés of what movie stars are and this and that, and they're egomaniacal pricks and tyrants, but in general, for the most part, they're nice people to tell you the truth.

  Leonardo DiCaprio

  Stars, Nice, People

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• Today the primary threat to the liberties of the American people comes not from communism, foreign tyrants or dictators. It comes from the tendency on our own shores to centralize power, to trust bureaucracies rather than people.

  George Allen

  Power, People, Liberty

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• O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

  Thomas Paine

  Love, Europe, Long

  Thomas Paine (2015). “Common Sense: and The American Crisis I”, p.32, Penguin

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• A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants.

  Doris Lessing

  Library, World, Dictator

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• Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?

  George W. Bush

  Intention, Strikes, Said

  Second Presidential State of the Union Address, delivered January 28, 2003

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• O slavish man! will you not bear with your own brother, who has God for his Father, as being a son from the same stock, and of the same high descent? But if you chance to be placed in some superior station, will you presently set yourself up for a tyrant?

  Epictetus

  Brother, Father, Son

  Epictetus (1964). “The Moral Discourses of Epictetus”

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• Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same thing as a monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari.

  Terry Pratchett

  Cities, Democracy, Age

  Stephen Briggs, Terry Pratchett (2015). “Unseen Academicals”, p.13, Oberon Books

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• The Founding Fathers did not believe the primary purpose of their guns was to hunt ducks, but to keep the government in line within the bounds of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers said that armed citizens are a bulwark against a tyrant in the White House.

  John Coleman

  Father, Believe, Gun

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• Time and again in this century, the political map of the world was transformed. And ineach instance a new world order came about through the advent of a new tyrant or the outbreak of a bloody global war, or its end.

  George H. W. Bush

  War, Order, Political

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• The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

  Aristophanes

  Love, Respect, Teacher

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• The poor ego has a still harder time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and it has to do its best to reconcile the claims and demands of all three...The three tyrants are the external world, the superego, and the id.

  Sigmund Freud

  Ego, Three, World

  "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis". Book by Sigmund Freud, transl. by James Strachey, "The Anatomy of the Mental Personality" (Lecture 31), 1933.

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