,

Tyrants Quotes

Quotes tagged as "tyrants" Showing 1-30 of 88
J.K. Rowling
“Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!”
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Mahatma Gandhi
“Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.”
Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

Octavia E. Butler
“Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.”
Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

Tobias Wolff
“Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.”
Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life

Howard Thurman
“If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection.”
Howard Thurman

Patrick  Henry
“A King, by disallowing Acts of this salutary nature, from being the father of his people, degenerated into a Tyrant and forfeits all rights to his subjects' obedience.”
Patrick Henry

Howard Thurman
“If a man is convinced that he is safe only as long as he uses his power to give others a sense of insecurity, then the measure of their security is in his hands. If security or insecurity is at the mercy of a single individual or group, then control of behavior becomes routine. All imperialism functions in this way.”
Howard Thurman

Melina Marchetta
“Do you want to know something about tyrants? When faced with death, they weep and they beg just like the rest of us.”
Melina Marchetta, Quintana of Charyn

Charles Fourier
“Despots prefer the friendship of the dog, who, unjustly mistreated and debased, still loves and serves the man who wronged him.”
Charles Fourier

Ethan Allen
“Ever since I arrived to a state of manhood, I have felt a sincere passion for liberty. The history of nations doomed to perpetual slavery, in consequence of yielding up to tyrants their natural born liberties, I read with a sort of philosophical horror; so that the first systematical and bloody attempt at Lexington, to enslave America, thoroughly electrified my mind, and fully determined me to take part with my country.”
Ethan Allen

Epictetus
“Here are thieves and robbers and tribunals: and they that are called tyrants, who deem that they have after a fashion power over us, because of the miserable body and what appertains to it. Let us show them that they have power over none.”
Epictetus, The Golden Sayings of Epictetus

Toba Beta
“Tyrants have only one problem in life.
They simply just wanna rule everything.”
Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

Wayne Gerard Trotman
“Laws become fragile under the influence of dictators.”
Wayne Gerard Trotman

Salman Rushdie
“The enemy is stupid, he replied. That is ground for hope. There is no originality in tyrants, and they learn nothing from the demise of their precursors. They will be brutal and stifling and engender hatred and destroy what men love and that will defeat them. All important battles are, in the end, conflicts between hatred and love, and we must hold to the idea that love is stronger than hate.”
Salman Rushdie, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

David Day
“Both [Satan and Melkor/Morgoth] are loud in their defiance, claiming that they would "rather rule in hell than serve in heaven". One might have admired these rebel angels if one believed their defiance was in the name of liberty- however, both lied. Their rebellions were only provoked by envy and the usurpers' wishes to take the perceived tyrants' place. Never were two more natural tyrants than Morgoth and Satan.”
David Day

Madeleine K. Albright
“Democracies, as we know, are prone to every error from incompetence and corruption to misguided fetishes and gridlock. Therefore, it is astonishing, in a sense, that we would be willing to submit the direction of our societies to the collective wisdom of an imperfect and frequently disengaged public. How could we be so naïve? To that fair question, we must reply: how could anyone be so gullible as permanently to entrust power—an inherently corrupting force—to a single leader or party? When a dictator abuses his authority, there is no legal way to stop him. When a free society falters, we still have the ability--through open debate and the selection of new leaders--to remedy those shortcomings. We still have time to pick a better egg. That is democracy's comparative advantage, and it should be recognized and preserved.”
Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning

Charles Haddon Spurgeon
“Never was the victory of patience more complete than in the early church. The anvil broke the hammer by bearing all the blows that the hammer could place upon it. The patience of the saints was stronger than the cruelty of tyrants.”
Charles H. Spurgeon

Candace Fleming
“...One thing I have noticed, child, is that tyrants are the grandest romantics. They can burn a heretic alive once day, and compose a love sonnet the next.”
Candace Fleming, Fatal Throne

Ira Chaleff
“When fires are small, we can smother them with a blanket or a bucket of sand. When they become conflagrations, all we can do is escape with our lives, retreat, and attempt to create fire breaks. So it is with the escalation of a leader with authoritarian tendencies to one who becomes a full-blown tyrant.”
Ira Chaleff, To Stop a Tyrant: The Power of Political Followers to Make or Brake a Toxic Leader

Timothy Snyder
“For resistance to succeed, two boundaries must be crossed. First, ideas about change must engage people of various backgrounds who do not agree about everything. Second, people must find themselves in places that are not their homes, and among groups who were not previously their friends. Protest can be organized through social media, but nothing is real that does not end on the streets. If tyrants feel no consequences for their actions in the three-dimensional world, nothing will change.”
Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Timothy Snyder
“What is truth?” Sometimes people ask this question because they wish to do nothing. Generic cynicism makes us feel hip and alternative even as we slip along with our fellow citizens into a morass of indifference. It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes the investigators is a potential tyrant.”
Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

مصطفى أمين
“وأعرف أن الذين تسلموا السلطة يؤمنون بالقوة والعنف والضرب بشدة، يعتبرون الرحمة ضعفاً والقسوة قوة.
يعتقدون أن الحرية فوضى والطغيان نظام.
يتوهمون أن ملء السجون والمعتقلات بالأبرياء دليل على ثبات الحكم، وأن الإفراج عن المسجونين السياسيين علامة على إهتزاز الحكام.”
مصطفى أمين, سنة رابعة سجن

Dean Koontz
“The man of the house was at the moment something less than a man. Or perhaps he was only what any man eventually might become when guided by no hand but his own.”
Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year

“We live under a government of not just a few tyrants, but countless thousands.”
Tanner Cook, The Way of Free Men: A Manual for Resisting Tyranny

Robert B. Reich
“Tyrants view educated citizens as their greatest enemy.”
Robert B. Reich

“More like Caesar or... what did they call them, Presidents? —a tyrant in necessity's clothing.”
Pierce Brown and Rik Hoskin, Red Rising

Pierce Brown
“More like Caesar or... what did they call them, Presidents? —a tyrant in necessity's clothing.”
Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“When thinkers rise, empires are challenged. When they fall silent, tyrants win.”
Egbearor Favour

Molly X. Chang
“Nowhere is safe in the times of tyrants, my dear.”
Molly X. Chang, The Nightblood Prince

R.M. Engelhardt
“TIME OUT

Every single time shit happens in history everyone
runs for cover to a church or an underground bunker
fearing death and retaliation slavery or retribution for
being alive or human because human beings keep fucking up our own atmosphere with hate never realizing that this pathetic behavior isn't human at all but primitive bullshit without real reason or soul never learning that greed and money is what every single time has brought us here to this very same place. A bunch of whiny, immature children screaming " Mine! Mine!" in a desperate need for a permanent time out in a prison cell who needs to learn that this shit isn't going to be accepted or tolerated anymore. Ever. The problem is is that you let them get away with it all and followed them blindly and stood by them, did nothing as they took all your rights and are now using your own money to amass more money, more weapons and more toys that they know will keep you from putting them where they belong in a prison cell or jail and in some most recent cases even an insane asylum.

So if this petty, child like behavior is never resolved from day one it's pretty obvious that in every century or country on this planet you're going to get an asshole or two who thinks he or even she is above or better than other human beings and acts out like a pathetic whiny little bitch who thinks they're entitled and doesn't play well with others . So let's all act like intelligent, mature adults and put them in permanent corners so they where they can't hurt anyone and do anymore significant damage. They're not messiahs or wise men.

They're immature children masquerading as competent adults who are the furthest thing from one.”
R.M. Engelhardt, The Bones of Our Existence, A Journal 2046

« previous 1 3