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Alexander Hamilton2 quotes
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 · 1787A 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 · 1787Aristotle2 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 BCSocrates2 quotes
Democracy passes into despotism. — Socrates · 375 BCThe 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 BCAbigail Adams1 quote
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. — Abigail Adams · 1776Aeschylus1 quote
No, death would be better, for that would be a milder lot than tyranny. — Aeschylus · 458 BCAlexis de Tocqueville1 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 · 1856Allan Bloom1 quote
The 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 · 1987Charles Peguy1 quote
Tyranny is always better organized than freedom. — Charles Peguy · 1943Daniel Defoe1 quote
Nature has left this Tincture in the Blood,
That all Men wou'd be Tyrants if they cou'd. — Daniel Defoe · 1701Daniel Webster1 quote
Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may. — Daniel Webster · 1835Edmund Burke1 quote
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. — Edmund Burke · 1780George Bernard Shaw1 quote
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder. — George Bernard Shaw · 1903George Orwell1 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 · 1949Hannah Arendt1 quote
Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think. — Hannah Arendt · 1970James Madison1 quote
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. — James Madison · 1788John Adams1 quote
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. — John Adams · 1813John Locke1 quote
Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690Soren Kierkegaard1 quote
The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins. — Soren Kierkegaard · 1848William Blackstone1 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 · 1769Wole Soyinka1 quote
The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny. — Wole Soyinka · 1972