Tyrants Quotes

Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

I'm willing to be regarded as a tyrant to keep my vision intact.

The consent of the governed" is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.

Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to the average person.

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.

Any ideal system is its own worst enemy, and as soon as you start to implement these visions of grandeur, they just fall apart and turn into a complete tyranny.

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding.

When sometimes, behind his back, they called him a tyrant, he merely smiled and uttered this profound observation: If some day I turn liberal, they will say I have let them down.

Still let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair; A messenger of Hope comes every night to me, And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.

The tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free.

That cruelest of tyrants - public opinion.

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.

Against the persecution of a tyrant the godly have no remedy but prayer.

One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.

It's the tyranny of an oligarchy that I'm concerned about.

The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.

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

Love is a tyrant sparing none.

When an administration embarks on a war justified by little or no intelligence, speaking the truth can be regarded as treachery. The country could use more of that kind of "treachery".

I loved Jack Ford. I got him in his later days, and he was a total tyrant and a total autocrat and an Irish drunk. But I had a great time.

As in Athens, the right to participate was restricted to men, just as it was also in all later democracies and republics until the twentieth century.

Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist.

Twixt kings and tyrants there's this difference known; Kings seek their subjects' good: tyrants their own.

Whether or not patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, national security can be the last refuge of the tyrant.

Most of the nations around the world are led by tyrants and dictators and thugs who are leading their countries for one reason.

The people cannot be all, and always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.

Our nation and those of the developed world must offer our own resistance to despot leaders who seek to commit murder on the basis of religion or race.

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.

Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.

Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.

[Magna Carta provided] "a system of checks and balances which would accord the monarchy its necessary strength, but would prevent its perversion by a tyrant or a fool.

Degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors. Time has proven that illustrious tyrants are succeeded by scoundrels.

In adamantine chains shall Death be bound, And Hell's grim tyrant feel th' eternal wound.

The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.

There is also a doubt as to what is to be the supreme power in the state: - Is it the multitude? Or the wealthy? Or the good? Or the one best man? Or a tyrant?

Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant.

War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.

Ronald Reagan said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R.

To add to our misery and despair, a bloated aristocracy has sent to China - the greatest and oldest despotism in the world - for a cheap working slave.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

Every tyrant who ever lived has believed in freedom — for himself.

The very freedom which the sinner supposedly exercises in his self-indulgence is only another proof that he is ruled by the tyrant.

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty against tyranny

International law? I better call my lawyer; he didn't bring that up to me.