Terry O'Quinn Quotes

The tyrant is a child of pride.

The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

Power is what men seek and any group that gets it will abuse it.

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

Power tends to get confused with repression.

Powerlessness also corrupts.

Watch out for the man who talks of putting things in order. Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.

That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

It is also in the interests of a tyrant to make his subjects poo...the people are so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for plotting.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.

Give a man a free hand and he'll try to put it all over you.

All men would be tyrants if they could.

Let tyrants shake their iron rod.

A good deal of tyranny goes by the name of protection.

You carry forever the fingerprint that comes from being under someone's thumb.

Power is always a corrupting influence.

The world is full of little dictators trying to run your life.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

Well, when you look at a lot of science fiction novels they're asking questions about power. There are questions about what it means to have power and what are the long-term consequences of power.

Fear is the foundation of most governments.