Edward Gibbon Quotes

She wanted to tell him so mach, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create.

The Tungans, more than the Han, are the enemy of our people. Today our people are already free from the oppression of the Han, but still continue under Tungan subjugation. We must still fear the Han, but cannot not fear the Tungans also. The reason we must be careful to guard against the Tungans, we must intensely oppose, cannot afford to be polite. Since the Tungans have compelled us, we must be this way. Yellow Han people have not the slightest thing to do with Eastern Turkestan. Black Tungans also do not have this connection. Eastern Turkestan belongs to the people of Eastern Turkestan. There is no need for foreigners to come be our fathers and mothers...From now on we do not need to use foreigners language, or their names, their customs, habits, attitudes, written language, etc. We must also overthrow and drive foreigners from our boundaries forever. The colors yellow and black are foul. They have dirtied our land for too long. So now it is absolutely necessary to clean out this filth. Take down the yellow and black barbarians! Long live Eastern Turkestan!

The masses are principally to be feared because they fly out ever and anon into violence; and from plundering they proceed to the flat levelling of estates.

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty

A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom—he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.

The only way to deal with the Czar is to be the last to leave the room.

Your dependence upon the crown is no advantage, but rather an injury to the people of Britain, as it increases the power and influence of the King.

Bombing, particularly from the perspective of the receiving end, is not 'communication.' Bombs result in death and destruction.

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.

Every Russian emperor from Peter the Great to Stalin and Putin knows a leader and his security agencies must never be parted. His safety depends on their slavish devotion.

At the moment of greatest love, there is greatest fear, and at the moment of enormous repression, there is resistance, and therefore a chance at revolutionary change.

Questioning authority can hardly be called our national pastime. We even make a philosophy out of fear. Fatalism, destiny, karma... are the favourite cultural holes we hide in when authority flogs us. And what's our tragedy.

To repress rebellion is to maintain the status quo, a condition which binds the mortal creature in a state of intellectual or physical slavery. But it is impossible to chain man merely by slaving his body; the mind also must be held, and to accomplish this, fear is the accepted weapon. The common man must fear life, fear death, fear God, fear the Devil, and fear most the overlords, the keepers of his destiny.

Let's not forget: This all began when you had eight- and nine-year-old children writing graffiti on walls. Their parents were told: "You will never see them again. If you want to have children, go to your wife and make new ones." [Bashar] Assad's people rebelled. He crushed them brutally. But his military could not protect him. So he asked the Iranians to come in and help.

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.

The problem with ruling by fear is that eventually, when the fear fades, fury replaces it.

A thousand men enslaved fear one beast free.

How great would be our peril if our slaves began to number us!

It is a revolution that came to power with its own army and on the ruins of the army of oppression.

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

Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch – this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion. Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. “Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen

The general (federal) government will tend to monarchy, which will fortify itself from day to day, instead of working its own cures.

As virtue is necessary in a republic, and honor in a monarchy, fear is what is required in a despotism. As for virtue, it is not at all necessary, and honor would be dangerous there.

If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain.