William Blake Quotes

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.

President Maliki: The appetite has grown with the eating. He has become a real dictator.

When any one person or body of men seize into their hands the power in the last resort, there is properly no longer a government, but what Aristotle and his followers call the abuse and corruption of one.

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.

Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them.

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced on his throne.

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

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

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

Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. They are master deceivers and talented manipulators who cannot be trusted to change.

Brutal men with unlimited power are the same all over the world.

Yes, citizens, Iturbide was a traitor, a hypocrite and an impious man who destroyed the assembly in which the people had deposited their sovereignty in order to appropriate it all to himself

Napoleon is a dangerous man in a free country. He seems tome to have the makings of a tyrant, and I believe that were he to be king he would be fully capable of playing such a part, and his name would become an object of detestation to posterity...

Emperor Napoleon is nothing but an ordinary king who tramples on human rights.

Oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.

... a step in the direction of tyranny.

One Hundred and Seventy Three Despots would surely be as oppressive as one.

In domestic as in political tyranny, the case of absolute monsters chiefly illustrates the institution by showing that there is scarcely any horror which may not occur under it if the despot pleases

Power tends to corrupt if you're there too long.

The rule of several bad men does not last long, and easily decays to the rule of a single tyrant.

… the tools of despotism and corruption

The whole administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery obeys a single will, the caprice of General Porfirio Diaz, who during his long administration has shown that the principal motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power and at any cost.