Lucien Bonaparte Quotes

Emperor Napoleon is nothing but an ordinary king who tramples on human rights.

Government by one man: He is called a lord if he inclines to a good and common end; a tyrant if he is inclined to pursue bad or merely personal ends.

Colonel Qaddafi's tyranny was absolutist, monarchical, and personal. The problem with such dictatorships is that as long as the tyrant lives, he reigns and terrorizes.

Founded upon a constitution which jealously withheld from it nearly all the powers of government, without even the poor privilege of existing beyond the moment when some one of the States composing it should see fit to put it to death, the Richmond government nevertheless grew speedily into a despotism, and for four years wielded absolute power over an obedient and uncomplaining people. It tolerated no questioning, brooked no resistance, listened to no remonstrance. It levied taxes of an extraordinary kind upon a people already impoverished almost to the point of starvation. It made of every man a soldier, and extended indefinitely every man's term of enlistment. Under pretense of enforcing the conscription law it established an oppressive system of domiciliary visits. To preserve order and prevent desertion it instituted and maintained a system of guards and passports, not less obnoxious, certainly, than the worst thing of the sort ever devised by the most paternal of despotisms. In short, a government constitutionally weak beyond all precedent was able for four years to exercise in a particularly offensive way all the powers of absolutism, and that, too, over a people who had been living under republican rule for generations.

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant; democracy, to many.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

I have no desire to go in for tyranny or to play the part of King Charles. I hate tyranny in any field of human activity.

You can't become a dictator through checks and balances.

A state is not a state if it belongs to one man.

Despotism isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be.

I admit that what you have just heard might be for the welfare of the country, were it not that the presence of despotism are always dangerous.

One Hundred and Seventy Three Despots would surely be as oppressive as one.

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

This is the only country in the world where a dictator will be allowed to sit among a democratically elected Congress. Everywhere else evil dictators go into exile.

We are a slack people but deeply destructive … I think that a constitutional regime would mean the end of Russia. We need a despot!

… the mortal enemy of liberty

I would be opposed to any kind of totalitarian control.

Napoleon - the people who were becoming Napoleon's generals realized that for him, it was not about spreading freedom and revolution; it was about creating a new empire with Napoleon the dictator or the emperor.

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

A king ruleth as he ought, a tyrant as he lists, a king to the profit of all, a tyrant only to please a few.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.

Every dictator is an enemy of freedom, an opponent of law.