Tyrant Quotes

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson

Law, Liberty, Others

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
Aristotle

Religion, Him, Put

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
Mahatma Gandhi

Accept, Within, Voice

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
Aristotle

Both, Mistrust, Deprive

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.
Elbert Hubbard

Freedom, Himself, Lived

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato

War, Fear, Nothing

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
Aldous Huxley

War, Democracy, Country

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.
Plato

Appears, Root, Protector

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!
Samuel Adams

Words, Meaning, Tools

For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant - Moammar Gaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world - including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents.
Barack Obama

Home, Freedom, Around

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.
Voltaire

Knows, Laws, Sovereign

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.
Soren Kierkegaard

Rule, Begins, Martyr

The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.
John Adams

Nation, Necessity, Doubted

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.
Bertrand Russell

Time, View, Image

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 August von Hayek

Freedom, Government, Made

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
Ambrose Bierce

Failure, Fool, Destiny

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Age, Death, Pain

There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.
Robert Green Ingersoll

Men, Liberty, While

Cruelty is a tyrant that's always attended with fear.
Thomas Fuller

Fear, Cruelty, Attended

If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher's cleaver.
Lord Byron

Business, Him, Fall

The tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free.
George W. Bush

Free, Iraq, Fallen

In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
Aeschylus

Trust, Heart, End

A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover but will sooner or later find a tyrant.
George Byron

Woman, May, Find

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
Aesop

Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.
Marshall McLuhan

Today, Rules, Ways

This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance.
Philip K. Dick

Ordinary, Heroic, Resistance

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.
Emile M. Cioran

Idea, Himself, Either

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them.
Emily Bronte

Him, Down, Against

Fantastic tyrant of the amorous heart. How hard thy yoke, how cruel thy dart. Those escape your anger who refuse your sway, and those are punished most, who most obey.
Matthew Prior

Anger, Heart, Hard

In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.
Emile M. Cioran

Order, Stuff, Necessary

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Auguste Rodin

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