Tyranny Quotes

"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men."

- Voltarine de Cleyre

"Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

- Frederick Douglass, civil rights activist, Aug. 4, 1857

"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."

- Robert Heinlein

"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

- William Pitt

"A tyrant...is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader."

- Plato

"Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?"

- Ayn Rand

"When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?"

- Mark Twain