Tyrants quotes
600 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside tyrants — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I can never acknowledge the right of slavery. I will bow down to no deity however worshipped by professing Christians - however dignified by the name of the Goddess of Liberty, whose footstool is the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who rejoices in the resoundings of the tyrant's lash, and the cries of his tortured victims."
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
"The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means."
"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."
"The tyrant custom, most grave senators, Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war My thrice-driven bed of down."
"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."
"Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty."
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it."
"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."
"From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step."
"For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men's property. To such a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power."
"Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels."
"There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance."
"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants."
"Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them."
"No people to whom liberty is given can hold it as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from the iron hand of the tyrant."
"Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant ... must not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves."
"How can tyrants safely govern home, Unless abroad they purchase great alliance."
"I would not be beholden to a tyrant, for his acts of tyranny. For it is but usurpation in him to save, as their rightful lord, the lives of men over whom he has no title to reign."
"A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader."
