Daniel Defoe Quotes

All men would be tyrants if they could.

Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.

There's a certain amount of tyranny in all of us to some extent, and in some people it's much more developed than in others. It's a different balance which makes us all different.

Anyone who seeks power wants absolute power.

Power intoxicates men. It is never voluntarily surrendered. It must be taken from them.

In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.

I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or few is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, 'Give, give.'

The Arrogance of Power

Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum.

Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity.

Power immobilizes; it freezes with a single gesture-grandiose, terrible, theatrical, or finally, simply monotonous-the variety which is life.

The desire to rule over others, the will to power, is one of the greatest crimes that man has committed.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

If monarchy is corrupting - and it is - wait till you see what overt empire does to us.

Conquerors never, never conquer a nation to bring freedom. They brought control.

A strength to harm is perilous in the hand of an ambitious head.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

The world is full of little dictators trying to run your life.

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

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.

Men are such power-seeking creatures, and they usually kill people to get to the throne.

Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man.

No tyrant, however evil, has yet lacked ready hands to execute his most abominable will. To read how eagerly men have rushed to serve the despot is the bitterest, the saddest matter of history; it is the saddest sight in our own day.