Tyranny Prevention Quotes

In a country like ours, abounding with free men all of one rank, where property is equally diffused, where estates are held in fee simple, the press free, and the means of information common; tyranny cannot readily find admission under any form of government; but its admission is next to impossible, under one where the people are the source of all power, and elect either immediately, by representatives, or immediately by themselves the whole of their rulers.

Our maxim of that day [1776] was "where annual election ends, tyranny begins.

All free constitutions are formed with two views—to deter the governed from crime, and the governors from tyranny.

If you're too dangerous to buy an airplane ticket, you're too dangerous to buy an assault weapon. And, when we talk about the Second Amendment - I support the Second Amendment - but the Second Amendment was created and designed to prevent tyranny and not to encourage terror.

Even under the best forms [of government], those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny ... the most effectual means of preventing this would be to illuminate ... the minds of the people at large.

Among the fundamental likeness between the Revolutionary Republicans and the Anarchists is the recognition that the little must precede the great; that the local must be the basis of the general; that there can be a free federation only when there are free communities to federate; that the spirit of the latter is carried into the councils of the former, and a local tyranny may thus become an instrument for general enslavement.

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

The people can never err more than in supporting that by multiplying their representatives beyond a certain limit, they strengthen the barrier against the government of a few.

There is no hope for the world unless power can be tamed, and brought into the service, not of this or that group of fanatical tyrants, but of the whole human race, white and yellow and black, fascist and communist and democrat; for science has made it inevitable that all must live or all must die.

No one man shall hold the power to bring this oppression [war] upon us.

The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.

Having principled men and women in office is how you protect yourself from tyranny, and that was something I learned from when I was 2, 3, 5 years old.

The house of representatives ... can make no law, which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny.

Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.

An urgent need exists for regular and responsible Congressional scrutiny of the Central Intelligence Agency. Such scrutiny is essential… Our form of government…is based on a system of checks and balances. If this system gets seriously out of balance at any point the whole system is jeopardized and the way is opened for the growth of tyranny…CIA is freed from practically every ordinary form of Congressional check. I agree that an intelligence agency must maintain complete secrecy to be effective. However, there is a profound difference between an essential degree of secrecy to achieve a specific purpose and secrecy for the mere sake of secrecy.

To prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be.

When the people rule, they must be rendered happy, or they will overturn the state.

Administrative tribunals did not come because anyone wanted them to come. They came because there seemed to be no other practical way of carrying on the affairs of government and discharging the duties and obligations which an increasingly complex social organization made it necessary for the government to perform....Those who have opposed the creation and extension of administrative tribunals have had the best of the argument on legal and constitutional grounds, but have been obliged to yield to an irresistible social pressure. Would it not be wise to recognize this fact, to give it a place in our legal system ... to the end that it may not become a source of tyranny and oppression?

No one man should have all that power.

I have a lot of guns on my ranch. I don't use them for hunting. I'm not a hunter. It's for protection. The Second Amendment was designed for tyranny.

The British government had not engaged in any serious actual oppression of the colonies before 1774, but it had claimed powers not granted by the governed, powers that made oppression possible, powers that it began to exercise in 1774 in response to colonial denial of them. The Revolution came about not to overthrow tyranny, but to prevent it.

The most effective means of preventing tyranny is to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts.

English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.

Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. You can join the Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep.

It will at least be a recommendation to the proposed constitution that it is provided with more checks and barriers against the introduction of tyranny, and those of a nature less liable to be surmounted, than any government hitherto instituted among mortals hath possessed.