Quotes · Skopia

23 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Tyranny✕clear

Treatise · Legal writing

In all tyrannical governments, the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.

William Blackstone

Commentaries on the Laws of England · 1769

★ 1.1

Speech · Political speech

Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.

1835

★ 1.9

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

George Bernard Shaw

1903

★ 1.9

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

1943

★ 1.9

The fundamental Article of my political Creed is, that Despotism, or unlimited Sovereignty, or absolute Power is the same in a Majority of a popular Assembly, and Aristocratical Counsel, an Oligarchical Junto and a Single Emperor.

1813

★ 1.9

Autobiography and memoir

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

1972

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Speech at the Bristol Guildhall, September 6, 1780 · 1780

★ 2.0

Novel · Dystopian fiction

By comparison with that existing today, all the tyrannies of the past were half-hearted and inefficient. The ruling groups were always infected to some extent by liberal ideas, and were content to leave loose ends everywhere, to regard only the overt act and to be uninterested in what their subjects were thinking.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 2.1

Play · Greek tragedy · Tragedy (play)

No, death would be better, for that would be a milder lot than tyranny.

Agamemnon · 458 BC

★ 2.2

Political literature

Nature has left this Tincture in the Blood, That all Men wou'd be Tyrants if they cou'd.

1701

★ 3.6

In the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.

1776

★ 3.6

Historical literature · Political literature

Despots themselves do not deny that freedom is excellent; only they desire it for themselves alone, and they maintain that everyone else is altogether unworthy of it.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The Ancien Regime and the Revolution · 1856

★ 3.6

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.

1970

★ 3.6

Essay · Political literature

A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.

Alexander Hamilton

Federalist 1 · 1787

★ 3.7

Personal journal

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.

Soren Kierkegaard

1848

★ 3.8

Philosophical dialogue · Dialogue · Philosophical literature

The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

Plato, Republic · 375 BC

★ 4.0

Philosophical literature

The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities.

1987

★ 5.3

Essay · Political literature

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.

Alexander Hamilton

Federalist 1 · 1787

★ 7.0

Essay · Political literature

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

Federalist 47 · 1788

★ 7.0

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.

Politics · 350 BC

★ 7.2

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