Tyrants Quotations | Page 2

What kind of tyrant punishes everyone just to get back at the few he's mad at? I mean, besides Chris Christie.

The government is a tyrant living by theft, and therefore has no business to engage in any business.

The shortest way to change a radical into a conservative, a liberal into a tyrant, a man into a beast, is to give him power over his fellows.

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobedience of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men

According to the faith and mercy of his Christian enemies, [Chosroes] sunk without hope into a still deeper abyss [Hell]; and it will not be denied, that tyrants of every age and sect are the best entitled to such infernal abodes.

History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.

Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.

Despotic governments do not recognize the precious human component of the state, seeing its citizens only as a faceless, mindless -- and helpless -- mass to be manipulated at will. It is as though people were incidental to a nation rather than its very life-blood.

Men are cowards before women until they become tyrants.

The law is a great thing,--because men are poor and weak, and bad. And it is great, because where it exists in its strength, no tyrant can be above it. But between you and me there should be no mention of law as the guide of conduct. Speak to me of honour, and of duty, and of nobility; and tell me what they require of you.

You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say "God is love" they will claim that you are taking things out of context!

Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects.

A dagger is the noble weapon of Brutus. Everyone understands that tyrants fall to daggers. A bomb is a sordid modern device with many complex working parts. Only engineers understand bombs

What is more cruel than a tyrant's ear?

Few tyrants go down to the infernal regions by a natural death.

The Sicilian tyrants never devised a greater punishment than envy.

Wretched men cringe before tyrants who have no power, the victims of their trivial hopes and fears. They do not realise that anger is hopeless, fear is pointless and desire all a delusion. He whose heart is fickle is not his own master, has thrown away his shield, deserted his post, and he forges the links of the chain that holds him.

Social and cultural change, however desirable, should not be effected by the engines of national power. Let us, through persuasion and education, seek to improve institutions we deem defective. But let us, in doing so, respect the orderly processes of the law. Any other course enthrones tyrants and dooms freedom.

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.

A tardy vengeance shares the tyrant's guilt.

Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain, It, makes us wander, wander earth around, To fly that tyrant Thought. As Atlas groan'd The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.

Who can take Death's portrait? The tyrant never sat.

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires.

I killed you once", the Lord Ruler said, turning back to Kelsier. "You tried", Kelsier replied, his voice loud and firm, carrying across the square. "But you can't kill me, Lord Tyrant. I represent that thing you've never been able to kill no matter how hard you try. I am hope.

But you can't kill me, Lord Tyrant. I represent that one thing you've never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope.

The most dangerous kind of man is not the one who spent his youth shoving others around. That kind of man gets lazy, and is often too content with his life to be truly dangerous. The man who spent his youth being shoved around, however … When that man gets a little power and authority, he often uses it to become a tyrant on par with the worst warlords in history.

I never wanted to be feared. If I regret one thing, it is the fear I have caused. Fear is the tool of tyrants. Unfortunately, when the fate of the world is in question, you use whatever tools are available.

Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.

Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant.

Nothing is so opportune for tyrants as a people tired of its liberty.

People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well

The Bible has, amazingly- no doubt with supernatural grace-survived its critics. The harder tyrants try to eliminate it and skeptics dismiss it, the better read it becomes.

Excessive dealings with tyrants are not good for the security of free states.

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots - suspicion.

I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe.

Industrialism, whether of the capitalist or socialist coloration, is the basic tyrant of the modern age.

Shakespeare wrote great poetry and preposterous plays. Who really cares, for example, which petty tyrant rules Milan? Or who succeeds to the throne of Denmark? Or why the barons ganged up on Richard II?

Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame a flatterer.

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

The purpose of the index was to create a conversation in rich countries about what it means to be a global citizen. We are not just talking about aid volumes; we are also asking questions about whether this aid is going to tyrants and corrupt dictators.

He's a scholar and somewhat of an academic, and has studied our history and America's place in the world, in history, and believes that all the progress of the last century, or a goodly portion of it -- eradication of tyrants and communism and fascism and Hitlerism -- was a direct result of the strength of the United States of America and their willingness to use their strength for good.

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?

Custom governs the world; it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners and rules the world with the hand of a despot.

A tyrant does not remain in the world; But the curse on him abides forever!

In this, our age of infamy Man's choice is but to be A tyrant, traitor, prisoner: No other choice has he.

A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste

You know the words from the Bible: 'Build not on sand, but on rock....' Tyrant leaders respect only firmness...and laugh at persons who give in to them.

In the creative process, my ego has always been a huge tyrant ... a dictator and kind of rude and very misleading, because sometimes when I'm doing something, I say, "This is great! This is fantastic! Very genius!" And 20 minutes later, I feel like a dead jellyfish. "You are a stupid a**hole. This is a piece of sh*t. Nobody will care about it."

Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.

...great Ambition, unchecked by principle, or the love of Glory, is an unruly Tyrant...

Would they not fear that citizens not less tenacious than conscious of their rights would flock from the remotest extremes of their respective states to the places of election, to overthrow their tyrants, and to substitute men who would be disposed to avenge the violated majesty of the people?

Our teachers were absolute tyrants. They had no sympathy with youth; their one object was to stuff our brains and turn us into erudite apes like themselves. If any pupil showed the slightest trace of originality, they persecuted him relentlessly, and the only model pupils whom I have ever got to know have all been failures in after-life.

We stand for the maintenance of private property... We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order.

Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators.

An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland.

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

The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

Suspense: the only literary tool that has any effect upon tyrants and savages.

We always think we are right, and - search as I have - there is no evil under the sun that somebody somewhere won't argue is actually a good, no idiocy that hasn't got its perfectly serious defenders, and no tyrant, past or present - no matter how bloody - without some bunch of zealot schmucks to defend him or his reputation till the last breath in their bodies - or preferably somebody else's.

Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.

There is bound to be a certain amount of trouble running any country. If you are president, the trouble happens to you. But if you are a tyrant you can arrange things so that most of the trouble happens to other people.

The mob is the mother of tyrants.

Michael Moore: a man who never without an excuse for keeping murdering tyrants in power. But now he's supporting the man who bombed Milosevic into submission? How about an explanation, Mr Moore?

Work becomes at once a delight and a tyrant. For even when the time comes and you can relax, you hardly know how.

Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.

The monster has escaped Elba!" "The tyrant has landed at Cannes!" "Bonaparte meets the troops." "Napoleon approaches Paris." "His Imperial Majesty has entered the capital.

We immerse ourselves in escapist mass entertainment, such as 'reality T.V.' programs. We support fanatical politicians and preachers. Our politicians, in turn, support dictators and tyrants in other countries, all in the name of 'security' and 'stability'. And we arm ourselves to the teeth, and pray to God to be saved.

You no longer heard comments about tyrants and pygmies. It may seem to be a small matter, but it's very important diplomatically.

The "Axis of Evil" was - and is - very real, as the tyrants of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea knew full well.

If you want to be a leader whom people follow with absolute conviction, you have to be a likable leader. Tyrants and curmudgeons with brilliant vision can command a reluctant following for a time, but it never lasts. They burn people out before they ever get to see what anyone is truly capable of.

Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Color does not necessarily denote quality, content or value. [If] a black is a tyrant, he is first and foremost a tyrant, then he incidentally is black. Bush is a tyrant and if he gathers around him black tyrants, they all have to be treated as they are being treated.

No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution.

. . . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them.

Propaganda is persuading people to make up their minds while withholding some of the facts from them.

Human beings today ... are surrounded by huge institutions we can never penetrate: the City [London's Wall Street], the banking system, political and advertising conglomerates, vast entertainment enterprises. They've made themselves user friendly, but they define the tastes to which we conform. They're rather subtle, subservient tyrants, but no less sinister for that.

Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of EMERGENCY.

That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

A Tyrant is most tyrant to himselfe.

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

There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant. And that is the force of human freedom.

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?

Tyrants and dictators will accept no other gods before them. They require disobedience to the First Commandment. They seek absolute control and are threatened by faith in God. They fear only the power they cannot possess - the power of truth. So they resent the living example of the devout, especially the devotion of a unique people chosen by God.

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

See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

The dignity of this end of endowment of man's life with new commodity appeareth by the estimation that antiquity made of such as guided thereunto ; for whereas founders of states, lawgivers, extirpators of tyrants, fathers of the people, were honoured but with the titles of demigods, inventors ere ever consecrated among the gods themselves.

In the larger sense, however, the personal ownership of firearms is only secondarily a matter of defense against the criminal. Note the following from Thomas Jefferson: The strongest reason for the people to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against the tyranny of government. That is why our masters in Washington are so anxious to disarm us. They are not afraid of criminals. They are afraid of a populace which cannot be subdued by tyrants.

That is why our masters in Washington are so anxious to disarm us. They are not afraid of criminals. They are afraid of a populace which cannot be subdued by tyrants.

One must never compromise with tyrants. One can only strike at kings through the head. Nothing can be expected from European kings except by force of arms. I vote for the death of the tyrant.

In the States, I learned to fight for every idea. Sometimes, a director has to be a tyrant to keep the quality.

Flight is lawful, when one flies from tyrants.

Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!

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

John Paul II spoke to the commoner and to the king, to the tyrant and to the democrat in that same language of freedom.

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.

When a man is just and firm in his purpose, The citizens burning to approve a wrong Or the frowning looks of a tyrant Do not shake his fixed mind, nor the Southwind. Wild lord of the uneasy Adriatic, Nor the thunder in the mighty hand of Jove: Should the heavens crack and tumble down, As the ruins crushed him he would not fear.

The tyrant is nothing but a slave turned inside out.

Of all insults, the temporary condescension of a master to a slave is the most outrageous and galling. That potentate who most condescends, mark him well; for that potentate, if occasion come, will prove your uttermost tyrant.

The Past is the textbook of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free.