August Friedrich Kellner Quotes

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

Excessive dealings with tyrants are not good for the security of free states.

Oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.

We have tended to be comfortable with authoritarian regimes.

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty

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.

For 73 years a totalitarian regime ruled the country. Totalitarian regime.

The principle of evil in Europe is the enervating spirit of Russian absolutism.

Napoleon is a dangerous man in a free country. He seems tome to have the makings of a tyrant, and I believe that were he to be king he would be fully capable of playing such a part, and his name would become an object of detestation to posterity...

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers … call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.

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!

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

In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and whenever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.

The era of individualism, liberalism and democracy, of humanitarianism and freedom, is nearing its end. The masses will accept with resignation the victory of the Caesars, the strong men, and will obey them. Life will descend to a level of general uniformity, a new kind of primitivism, and the world will be better for it.....

In Turkey, public opinion is nil and the people always obey any effective executive force, and obey nothing else…. The perpetuation of Turkish rule is the perpetuation of infamy.

Rule with an iron first will inevitably come to an end.

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

Tyrants don’t respond to any kind of appeasement. Tyrants only responds to toughness.

… the mortal enemy of liberty

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

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.

There is no need to give in to the compromise that totalitarian regimes always count on.