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Political literature8 quotes
No tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. — Aristotle · 350 BCWhere 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. — Aristotle · 350 BCWhere-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690Of 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 · 1787The 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. — James Madison · 1788A 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 · 1787All 8 quotes →Philosophical literature5 quotes
Democracy passes into despotism. — Socrates · 375 BCNo tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. — Aristotle · 350 BCWhere 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. — Aristotle · 350 BCThe most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities. — Allan Bloom · 1987The 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. — Socrates · 375 BCPolitical speech2 quotes
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. — Edmund Burke · 1780Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may. — Daniel Webster · 1835Autobiography and memoir1 quote
The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny. — Wole Soyinka · 1972Dystopian fiction1 quote
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. — George Orwell · 1949Greek tragedy1 quote
No, death would be better, for that would be a milder lot than tyranny. — Aeschylus · 458 BCHistorical literature1 quote
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 · 1856Legal writing1 quote
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 · 1769Tragedy (play)1 quote
No, death would be better, for that would be a milder lot than tyranny. — Aeschylus · 458 BC