Patrick Henry Quotes

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

Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding.

Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant.

What is more cruel than a tyrant's ear?

The people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel, as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power. The majority has eternally, and without one exception, usurped over the rights of the minority.

Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

All executive power --- from the reign of ancient kings to the rule of modern dictators --- has the outward appearance of efficiency

Since the origin of the world there has never been a king—even if you were to select the very best—who did not in some measure abuse his authority…

The army and the government needs a dictator.

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.

A king, from being a father to his people, degenerates into a tyrant, and forfeits all right to obedience.

Kings are but men, are subject to all the passions and frailties of human nature, and consequently are too prompt to grasp at arbitrary power, and to wish to make all things bend and submit to their will & pleasure.

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

Unlike monarchs, who pass power to their heirs at the moment of death to ensure the survival of the regime, tyrants must simply survive as long as possible.

Terror is trump. Common, brutal suppression methods are considered as sanctified laws. "Old Fighters" are holy ones. From the district leader upwards there are only Gods!

One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one.

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

The most insupportable of tyrants exclaim against the exercise of arbitrary power.

No tyranny is more cruel than the one practised in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves. And since a tyrant never lacks instruments for his tyranny, Tiberius always found judges ready to condemn as many people as he might suspect.

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

Tyrants and dictators will accept no other gods before them. They require disobedience to the First Commandment. They seek absolute control and are threatened by faith in God. They fear only the power they cannot possess - the power of truth. So they resent the living example of the devout, especially the devotion of a unique people chosen by God.

Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant ... must not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves.

An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia to-day.

"Magna Carta is the Law: Let the King look out." So it has always been with tyrants among our own people: when the King was tyrant, let him look out. And it has always been the same, and will be the same, whether the tyrant be the Barons, whether the tyrant be the Church, whether he be demagogue or dictator - let them look out.