Table of Contents
Tyranny (n): cruel and oppressive government or rule
Before we dive into the tyranny quotes, let us first ask: Is the United States government tyrannical? Not constantly, no. It is awfully good of the police to arrest perpetrators of property crimes, when they are allowed to, and we’d certainly be happy to see the Coast Guard if we just flipped the official Libertas Bella catamaran 12 miles off the coast of Naples Beach.
But the government does check the tyranny boxes when it wants to. Sentencing a mother of four to 12 years in prison for selling $31 of marijuana is arguably very cruel. (Although we do wonder why she didn’t just charge an even thirty. Maybe she offered seed and stem removal for an extra dollar?) Had the CIA carried out its 1962 plan to commit terrorist attacks in order to drum up support for war against Cuba, the alphabet boys would have acted with exceptional cruelty. And giving me a speeding ticket for doing 62 in a 55 is absolute horse****.
You might also argue that any government which reads its citizens’ private correspondences is oppressive. You could say the same about one which roasts children alive, places its own citizens in concentration camps, codifies racism, and spies on Quakers.
In all fairness, perhaps a government can be tyrannical for the right reasons sometimes. We’re sure a lot of the kids in those concentration camps had direct lines to Hirohito himself.
People who feel obligated to defend the largest and most powerful organization on the face of the planet ought to consider that an abusive father can still make his kids macaroni and cheese for dinner after he has spent the past half hour throwing empty liquor bottles at them. But they’re probably more concerned about getting the taste of boot polish out of their mouths.
Tyranny and Government Control
“Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.”
— Aristotle
“A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.”
– Isabel Paterson, God of the Machine
“Where you find the laws most numerous, there you will find also the greatest injustice.”
– Arcesilaus
“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
— Thomas Jefferson
“Beware of those who seek to take care of you lest your caretakers become your jailers.”
– Jim Rohn, The Treasury of Quotes
“Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
— Thomas Jefferson
“Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.”
— Edmund Burke
“However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
– George Washington, speaking about the two-party political system in his Farewell Address, 1796
“As little State as possible!”
– Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day
“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.”
“A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.”
“The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.”
— Aesop
“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
— James Madison
“The tyrant claims freedom to kill freedom, and yet keep it for himself.”
“The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”
— James Maddison
“The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”
— James Maddison
“They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject those voices.”
— Barack Obama
“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism – by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”
– Ayn Rand, L.A. Times, September 2, 1962
“Either we believe that the State exists to serve the individual or that the individual exists to serve the State.”
– Ayn Rand
“The more the state plans, the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”
“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves!”
“Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.”
“Free people can treat each other justly, but they can’t make life fair. To get rid of the unfairness among individuals, you have to exercise power over them. The more fairness you want, the more power you need. Thus, all dreams of fairness become dreams of tyranny in the end.”
The Role of Knowledge, Law, and Speech
“Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics … derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
– Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.”
— Maximilien Robespierre
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
– Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
“Most of the people buying the Soviet paraphernalia were Americans and West Europeans. All would be sickened by the thought of wearing a swastika. None objected, however, to wearing the hammer and sickle on a T-shirt or a hat. It was a minor observation, but sometimes, it is through just such minor observations that a cultural mood is best observed. For here, the lesson could not have been clearer: while the symbol of one mass murder fills us with horror, the symbol of another mass murder makes us laugh.”
“The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.”
– H.L. Mencken, Minority Report
“It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail.”
— Samuel Adams
“We must beware of a tyranny of opinion which tries to make only one side of a question the one which may be heard.”
— Winston Churchill
“Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.”
— Frederick Douglass
“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.”
— Baron de Montesquieu
“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
— Voltaire
“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
— Thomas Jefferson
Resistance and Rebellion
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“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
“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
— Edmund Burke
“When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.”
— Thomas Jefferson
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
— Thomas Jefferson
“The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resist it.”
— John Hay
“The best government is that which governs least.”
— Henry David Thoreau
The Psychology and Nature of Tyrants
“All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.”
— George Orwell
“The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.”
— Albert Camus
“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.”
— C.S. Lewis
“God himself has no right to be a tyrant.”
— William Godwin
“Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.”
— Unknown, but often attributed to Thomas Jefferson.
“And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?
Poor man, I know he would not be a wolf,
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep.”
— William Shakespeare
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.”
— Cicero
“A tyrant is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.”
— Plato
“The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.”
— Thomas Paine
Holy cow! Were those some great tyranny quotes or what? Now, be a good sport and print out this web page to take with you on your upcoming vacation to North Korea.