Despotism Quotes

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

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

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

Fascism is a religion; the twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.

He who has the greatest power put into his hands will only become the more impatient of any restraint in the use of it.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

In a hundred years to come my people will not be fit for liberty. They do not know what it is….Despotism is the proper government for them.

When the people are sheep, the government is always a wolf.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man.

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Let us strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest.

The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny…

It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false pretenses, they call empire and where they make a desert they call it peace.

Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else; and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage.

Better a hundred years of tyranny than one day of anarchy.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.