Stendhal Quotes

… we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

All executive power --- from the reign of ancient kings to the rule of modern dictators --- has the outward appearance of efficiency

Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.

A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.

A group of Cuban Americans denounced the Castro government as a fascist regime that monitors and scrutinized its citizens' everyday existence. And then they excused themselves to go watch Big Brother.

Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

The concentrating of powers in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.

Spineless politics do not change the mind of a tyrant.

When you read history you that kings who have come to the end of their tether, as a rule, would suffer death rather than give up part of their power.

At times it is necessary for a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power..

… the meanest and worst of all forms of government

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don't like the glare of negative publicity.

The political lives of tyrants play out human affairs with a special intensity: the death of a democratic leader long after his retirement is a private matter, but the death of a tyrant is always a political act that reflects the character of his power.

My position and the state will never allow me to become a dictator, but an authoritarian ruling style is characteristic of me.

According to Netanyahu, he should rule like a Caesar, and the Knesset should be run by the tyranny of the majority.

The whole Big Brother vision of the world is looming large.

My mom told me many times how I need to be careful living inside the regime. We didn't say 'the regime.' We didn't even say 'North Korea.'

When totalitarian regimes are established, they at least have the illusion of the single-minded purpose. But once they establish the stature that's necessary for a totalitarian regime, they tend to flail.

An authoritarian style of rule is characteristic of me, and I have always admitted it.

I am in favour of a dictatorship.

Dictatorship is like a giant beech-tree - very magnificent to look at in its prime, but nothing grows underneath it.

One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one.

The term Big Brother is from George Orwell's book 1984 - where everyone's watched over by a network of cameras called Big Brother. I've never understood why Orwell chose that phrase for somebody watching you all the time. Isn't that more like Creepy Uncle?