Daniel Defoe Quotes

Nature has left this tincture in the blood, That all men would be tyrants if they could.

There's a certain amount of tyranny in all of us to some extent, and in some people it's much more developed than in others. It's a different balance which makes us all different.

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

Anyone who seeks power wants absolute power.

The tyrant is only the slave turned inside out.

… the tools of despotism and corruption

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

Conquerors never, never conquer a nation to bring freedom. They brought control.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.

The love of domination and an uncontrolled lust of arbitrary power have prevailed among all nations and perhaps in proportion to the degrees of civilization.

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

Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.

The people always have some champion who they set over them and nurse into greatness …. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears, he is a protector.

Mobutu does not think he is God.

Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on.

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

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

Power immobilizes; it freezes with a single gesture-grandiose, terrible, theatrical, or finally, simply monotonous-the variety which is life.

Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.

The tyrant claims freedom to kill freedom, and yet keep it for himself.

Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomen. To the same degree that I do not understand power, I do understand those who oppose power, who criticize power, who contest power, especially those who rebel against power imposed by brutality.

The desire to rule over others, the will to power, is one of the greatest crimes that man has committed.

Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination.