Anne Robert Jacques Turgot Quotes

They (tyrants) should be attacked, not as ordinary enemies, but as assassins and rebellious brigands. Kings, aristocrats, tyrants, whoever they may be, are slaves in revolt against the sovereign of the land, who is the human race, and against the legislator of the Universe, who is Nature.

Notwithstanding my experiments with electricity the thunderbolt continues to fall under our noses and beards; and as for the tyrant, there are a million of us still engaged at snatching away his sceptre.

God himself has no right to be a tyrant.

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

All my authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a glorious struggle in opposition to the lawless power of rebellious kings and princes

No one can go on being a rebel too long without becoming an autocrat.

The tree of liberty could not grow were it not watered with the blood of tyrants

O kings, exercise your power then boldly, for it is divine and salutary for human kind, but exercise it with humility. You are endowed with it from without. At bottom it leaves you feeble, it leaves you mortal, it leaves you sinners, and charges you before God with a very heavy account.

Between the people and their enemies there can be nothing in common but the sword; we must govern by iron those who cannot be governed by justice; we must oppress the tyrant...

Insurrection is the exclusive right of the people and of the citizen. Every foreigner, every man clothed with public authority, is outlawed if he proposes it and must be put to death as a usurper of sovereignty and as interested in fomenting troubles for the purpose of doing evil or of adorning himself. Insurrections taking place under a despotism are always salutary. Those which break out in a free state are sometimes dangerous for liberty itself, because the revolt usurps its sublime pretexts and its sacred name. Revolts in free states leave long and painful wounds which bleed a whole century.

No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand…. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.

I went to Boston fully expecting to be arrested - arrested by a polizia created by a government that my ancestors rebelled to establish.

Sovereignty is not given, it is taken.

When we have but the will to do it, that very moment will Justice be done: that very instant the tyrants of the Earth shall bite the dust.

Tremble, ye tyrants, for ye can not die.

Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant; resurrection does not make a covenant with death, it overthrows it.

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

God is the King. In him exists all legal authority.

The apostle enters upon his subject thus - Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers; for there is no power but of God: the powers that be, are ordained of God.

The splendid empire of Charles the Fifth was erected upon the grave of liberty.

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

People demand freedom only when they have no power.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.