Calvin Coolidge Quotes

Every State is a despotism, be the despot one or many.

When the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government.

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.

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

Instead of a weak and vacillating Government, a single, purposeful, energetic personality is ruling today.

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken – unspeakable fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts!

An unbridled democracy is exactly similar to a tyranny. Its objects and instruments are the worst, and both are equally served by the tamest of mankind. It is always to lord it as a sovereign; it therefore has its flatterers in the shape of demagogues. Ancient customs must be done away with; ancient ties, civil and sacred, must be broken; everything must be changed according to new and false theories; and the result is an assimilation of democratic to tyrannical government, in its habits and modes of action.

Oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.

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.

To recommend what monarchies have done, They bring, for witness, David and his son; How one was brave, the other just and wise; And hence our plain Republics they despise; But mark how oft, to gratify their pride, The people suffered, and the people died; Though one was wise, and one Goliath slew, Kings are the choicest curse that man e’er knew!

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty

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.

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it. Dealing with Congress is a matter of give and take. The president doesn't get everything he wants, the Congress doesn't get everything they want. But we're finding good common ground.

I want to be dictator.

Dictatorship is a constant lecture instructing you that your feelings, your thoughts and desires are of no account, that you are a nobody and must live as you are told by other people who desire and think for you

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.

I don't really understand what a dictator is, but on the other hand I sometimes, in a nice way, envy myself," he said. "I am the last and only dictator in Europe and indeed there are none anywhere else in the world.

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

He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap.

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

The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.

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

By contrast, China is a repressive regime that denies its citizens the essential freedoms of religion, political dissent and representative self-government.

It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed ... The government of the revolution is liberty's despotism against tyranny.

Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.