If it's a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates,' then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.
We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.
Tyranny is for the worst of treasons.
The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny.
The first who attracts the eye, the first in enlightenment, in power and in happiness, is the white man, the European, man par excellence; below him appear the Negro and the Indian. These two unfortunate races have neither birth, nor face, nor language, nor mores in common; only their misfortunes look alike. Both occupy an equally inferior position in the country that they inhabit; both experience the effects of tyranny; and if their miseries are different, they can accuse the same author for them.
There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.
To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminences of fame ascended without labour, is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or the heights inaccessible to perseverance, is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind in voluntary shackles.
The willing sacrifice of the innocents is the most powerful retort to insolent tyranny that has yet to be conceived by God or man.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
A lot of people died fighting tyranny. The least I can do is vote against it.
Traditionally, Africans hate governments. They hate tyranny.
. . . resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal.
Every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny.
This is a sickness rooted and inherent in the nature of a tyranny: that he that holds it does not trust his friends.
America was founded by men who understood that the threat of domestic tyranny is as great as any threat from abroad. If we want to be worthy of their legacy, we must resist the rush toward ever-increasing state control of our society. Otherwise, our own government will become a greater threat to our freedoms than any foreign terrorist.
Sometimes. . . we suffer from the tyranny of comparison. Contests, competitions, thrive on it. Who cares?
When more Americans prefer freebies to freedom, these great United States will become a fertile ground for tyranny.
A nation which enslaves another forges its own chains.