Allen West Quotes

I don't see democracy getting better. I see democracy diminishing. More rules, more legislation. Eventually governments will see everything.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

And we know that once we have a majority that are dependent upon the government, we will lose our freedom; it says we go into bondage. That's the next stage.

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 army and the government needs a dictator.

Such is the terror--the crushing fear--which is inspired by one man over that multitude, which now submits to his decrees with a zeal, apparently as ardent, as it is certainly abject and submissive. There is not a complaint heard. The calm and dark waters of despotism are never disturbed by the slightest ripple. Not a breath of free thought or manly speech passes over them, but they lie dead and deep, into which every vestige of the people's liberty and freedom has sunk and disappeared.

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty

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

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

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 world will not accept dictatorship or domination.

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

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.

I have no desire to go in for tyranny or to play the part of King Charles. I hate tyranny in any field of human activity.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

You can't become a dictator through checks and balances.

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism –-- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

I admit that what you have just heard might be for the welfare of the country, were it not that the presence of despotism are always dangerous.