Vachel Lindsay Quotes

Who does not know that kings and rulers sprang from men who were ignorant of God, who assumed because of blind greed and intolerable presumption to make themselves masters of other men, their equals, by means of pride, violence, bad faith, murder, and almost every other kind of crime? Surely the devil drove them on.

Those who have no sense of right, reason or religion, have a natural propensity to make use of their strength to the destruction of such as are weaker than they.

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel!

Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice-- The weakness and the wickedness of luxury-- The negligence--the apathy--the evils Of sensual sloth--produces ten thousand tyrants, Whose delegated cruelty surpasses The worst acts of one energetic master, However harsh and hard in his own bearing.

For this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule.

Degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors. Time has proven that illustrious tyrants are succeeded by scoundrels.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.

Power is always a corrupting influence.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

Absolute power should never be trusted to man. It has perverted the wisest heads, and corrupted the best hearts in the world. I should be afraid to commit my property, liberty and life to a body of angels for one whole year.

… the imaginations of men are exceedingly prone to deify and worship them [kings]; though, to the great misfortune of mankind, they are more commonly fiends, than angels.

Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best..

Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.

I hate what you represent." ... "Power without conviction." Isana replied, her tone lifeless, matter of fact. "Ambition without conscience. Decent folk suffer at the hands of those like you.

The true objection to slavery is not that it is unjust to the inferior but that it corrupts the superior.

Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate ... the return of the human dignity, repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible.

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.

Rome has betrayed itself. It knew the truth and chose violence, it knew humaneness and it chose tyranny.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

There are always people willing to commit unspeakable human atrocity in exchange for a little power and privilege.

There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.