William Hazlitt Quotes

Yes, citizens, Iturbide was a traitor, a hypocrite and an impious man who destroyed the assembly in which the people had deposited their sovereignty in order to appropriate it all to himself

Mexicans!... It would appear that justice had fled from this world, leaving you to the caprice of your oppressors, who have become each day more furious toward you.... My part is taken, the voice of revelation whispers ... that the Lord will enable me, with powerful arm, to fight against our enemies.

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.

We will oppose and resist tyranny as we will defeat evil.

Unjust dominion cannot be eternal.

The dagger plunged in the name of freedom is plunged into the breast of freedom.

It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom.

Corruption never has been compulsory; when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains.

Tyrannies are overthrown by ideas. Armies are defeated by ideas. Nations, and Time itself, are overmatched by ideas.

In reality, though, the first thing to ask of history is that it should point out to us the paths of liberty. The great lesson to draw from revolutions is not that they devour humanity but rather that tyranny never fails to generate them.

There are two kinds of rebellion. The first is one in which the slave demands something that the tyrant has got. The second is one in which he demands something that the tyrant has not got.

Oppression breeds the power to oppose it.

I have struggled against tyranny. I didn't do that in order to substitute another.

The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.

Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds.

You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.

Man and fascism cannot co-exist. If fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, man who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people.

The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition, that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway.

Under dictatorship, the people in prison are always superior to the people who put them there.

Nevertheless, to the persecution and tyranny of his cruel ministry we will not tamely submit - appealing to Heaven for the justice of our cause, we determine to die or be free . . . .

Where is the man, who, if asked to become a slave, would not hurl back the offer indignantly in the teeth of the oppressor?

There are cases where the slave does not know his servitude and where it is necessary to bring the seed of his liberation to him from the outside: his submission is not enough to justify the tyranny which is imposed upon him.

Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom.

Man puts manacles on his fellow-man; God never.

Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.