Aesop Quotes

The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.

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.

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced on his throne.

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

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

Brutal men with unlimited power are the same all over the world.

The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it.

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

One Hundred and Seventy Three Despots would surely be as oppressive as one.

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

Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

A tyrant is the worst disease, and the cause of all others.

The tyrant claims freedom to kill freedom, and yet keep it for himself.

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant; democracy, to many.

A tyrant institutionalises stupidity, but he is the first servant of his own system and the first to be installed within it.

What is more cruel than a tyrant's ear?

The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.

To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.

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