Tyrant Quotes
More Tyrant Quotes
Alike were they free from Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics. Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows; But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of their owners; There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Part I, section 1
Notwithstanding my experiments with electricity the thunderbolt continues to fall under our noses and beards; and as for the tyrant, there are a million of us still engaged at snatching away his sceptre.
— Benjamin Franklin, comment on Tubgot's inscription in a letter to Felix Nogaret, who translated the lines into French.
Skiddaw shews its vast base, and bounding all that part of the vale, rises gently to a height that sinks the neighboring hills; opens a pleasing front, smooth and verdant, smiling over the country like a gentle generous lord, while the fells of Borrowdale frown on it like a hardened tyrant.
— Thomas Pennant A Tour in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides (London: Benjamin White, [1774-6] 1790) p. 46
How strangely will the Tools of a tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!
Samuel Adams— Letter to John Pitts (21 January 1776)
The tyrant nowTrusts not to men: nightly within his chamberThe watch-dog guards his couch, the only friendHe now dare trust.
joanna baillie— Ethwald (1802), Part II, Act V, scene 3.
"Magna Carta is the Law: Let the King look out."So it has always been with tyrants among our own people: when the King was tyrant, let him look out. And it has always been the same, and will be the same, whether the tyrant be the Barons, whether the tyrant be the Church, whether he be demagogue or dictator — let them look out.
stanley baldwin— Speech at Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), p. 4
Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it its wars and its domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there is ... death!Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centers on the principle of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement.The choice lies with you!
peter kropotkin— X, Closing lines
Once Diogenes, who was washing vegetables, ridiculed him as he passed by, and said, "If you had learnt to eat these vegetables, you would not have been a slave in the palace of a tyrant." But Aristippus replied, "And you, if you had known how to behave among men, would not have been washing vegetables."
diogenes laërtius— Aristippus, 4.
We swapped the tyrant 3,000 miles away for a handful of financial slaveowning overlords who make the tyrant of Great Britain seem mild.
huey long— 1933 Congressional Record, 72d Cong, 2d sess., Vol. 76; quoted in Hugh Davis Graham, Huey Long (1970), p. 55.
They may veil their eyes, but they cannot hideThe sun’s meridian glow;The heel of a priest may tread thee down,And a tyrant work thee woe:But never a truth has been destroyed;They may curse it, and call it crime;Pervert and betray, or slander and slayIts teachers for a time.But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,As round and round we run;And the truth shall ever come uppermost,And justice shall be done.
charles mackay— "Eternal Justice", Stanza 4
The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab.
joseph conrad— Ch. 28 (The Mirror of the Sea (1906))
Whoever declares a child to be "delicate" thereby crowns and anoints a tyrant.
Robertson Davies— Part 1, section 6
Even the children of Carmona were divided into two camps, and below the ramparts, among the brushwood and rocks, we battled with stones shouting "Long live the duke!" and others, "Down with the tyrant!" We fought viciously, but I was never satisfied with this game the fallen enemy rose again, the dead came back to life. The day after a battle, victors and vanquished both found themselves unharmed.
Simone de Beauvoir— p. 72 (All Men are Mortal (1946))
"The law is an expression of God 's holy will and as such must be honored and loved," said the preacher piously. "Rubbish," said the Master. "The law is a necessary evil and as such must be cut down to the barest minimum. Show me a lover of the law and I will show you a muttonheaded tyrant ."
anthony de mello— p. 67 (One Minute Nonsense (1992))
The things... which are proper to the understanding no other man is used to impede, for neither fire, nor iron, nor tyrant, nor abuse, touches it in any way. When it has been made a sphere, it continues a sphere.
marcus aurelius— VIII, 41. (Book VIII)
In tears she utter'd as the frozen snow Touch'd by the spring's mild ray, begins to flow, So just began to melt his stubborn soul, As mild-ray'd pity o'er the tyrant stole; But destiny forbade: with eager zeal, Again pretended for the public weal, Her fierce accusers urged her speedy doom; Again dark rage diffused its horrid gloom O'er stern Alonzo's brow: swift at the sign, Their swords unsheathed around her brandish'd shine. O foul disgrace, of knighthood lasting stain, By men of arms a helpless lady slain!
william julius mickle— Book III; of Inez de Castro.
Who can take Death's portrait? The tyrant never sat.
Edward Young— Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night II, line 52.
The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.
— Søren Kierkegaard, Journals, 1848.
Alike were they free from Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847), Part I, Section 1 (1847).
She should be my counsellor, But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs Impulses from a deeper source than hers; And there are motions, in the mind of man, That she must look upon with awe.
— William Cullen Bryant, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 353
Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
friedrich hayek— Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960)
[Magna Carta provided] “a system of checks and balances which would accord the monarchy its necessary strength, but would prevent its perversion by a tyrant or a fool.”
— Winston Churchill, Magna Carta and Man’s Quest for Freedom, JW.org
Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
Henry David Thoreau— Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides , having attempted to kill the tyrant Demylus, and failing in his design, maintained the doctrine of Parmenides, like pure and fine gold tried in the fire, that there is nothing which a magnanimous man ought to dread but dishonor, and that there are none but children and women, or effeminate and women-hearted men, who fear pain. For, having with his own teeth bitten off his tongue, he spit it in the tyrant's face.
— Plutarch, in "Against Colotes the Epicurean" in Morals
I will be harsh and stern against the aggressor, but I will be a pillar of strength for the weak. I will not calm down until I will put one cheek of a tyrant on the ground and the other under my feet, and for the poor and weak, I will put my cheek on the ground.
— As quoted in Al Farooq, Umar (1944) by Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Ch. 5, p. 124
The iron hand crush'd the tyrant's headAnd became a tyrant in his stead.
william blake— Ibid, stanza 9
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— Speech on the Parson's Cause, in the Hanover County Courthouse (1763)
