Muriel Spark Quotes

If a sovereign oppresses his people to a great degree, they will rise and cut his head off.

The reign of the tyrant ends with his death, and the reign of the martyr starts with it.

When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant.

Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress?

I would not be beholden to a tyrant, for his acts of tyranny. For it is but usurpation in him to save, as their rightful lord, the lives of men over whom he has no title to reign.

Tremble, all ye oppressors of the world!

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

If officials are too forceful, people will revolt.

The removal of a tyrant is not merely justifiable; it is the highest duty of every true revolutionist.

Tyranny must be opposed at the start. Autocracy, once secured in the saddle, is difficult to dislodge.

Despotism, be it financial or political, is vulnerable, unless it is believed to rest upon a moral sanction.

No one can go on being a rebel too long without becoming an autocrat.

Instead of contributing to the restoration of liberty they enlist of their own free will under the flag of the Spanish tyrants and most actively co-operate to our destruction

The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise.

The more brutal the dictator, the harder to oust.

We have the power to turn against our creators.

I have mortally opposed the English king; I have stormed and taken the towns and castles which he unjustly claimed as his own.

The price of toppling Gadhafi will be steep. But Libyans will topple him, and in doing so, they will bring down with him the castles of fear our dictators thought they had fortified.

When we have but the will to do it, that very moment will Justice be done: that very instant the tyrants of the Earth shall bite the dust.

Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy.

Moses lifting up his wand, and dividing the Red Sea, and Pharaoh in his chariot overwhelmed with the waters. This motto: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."

The tyrant is nothing but a slave turned inside out.

O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone.

Under dictatorship, the people in prison are always superior to the people who put them there.

Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant; resurrection does not make a covenant with death, it overthrows it.