Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [121-140] of 689 Tyranny quotesTyranny QuotesTyranny Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charges known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgment by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments...Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilisation.~ Winston Churchill The more laws, the less justice.~ Marcus Tullius Cicero Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.~ Marcus Tullius Cicero We are taxed in our bread and our wine, in our incomes and our investments, on our land and on our property not only for base creatures who do not deserve the name of men, but for foreign nations, complaisant nations who will bow to us and accept our largesse and promise us to assist in the keeping of the peace - these mendicant nations who will destroy us when we show a moment of weakness or our treasury is bare, and surely it is becoming bare! We are taxed to maintain legions on their soil, in the name of law and order and the Pax Romana, a document which will fall into dust when it pleases our allies and our vassals. We keep them in precarious balance only with our gold. Is the heartblood of our nation worth these? Were they bound to us with ties of love, they would not ask our gold. They take our very flesh, and they hate and despise us. And who shall say we are worthy of more? ... When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself.~ Marcus Tullius Cicero A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.~ Marcus Tullius Cicero Do not hold the delusion that your advancement is accomplished by crushing others.~ Marcus Tullius Cicero During war, the laws are silent.~ Quintus Tullius Cicero When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed...~ Civil Servants' Year Book There is nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitor.~ Frank Clark America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to denigration without the usual interval of civilization.~ Georges Clemenceau There is one thing in the world more wicked than the desire to command, and that is the will to obey.~ William Kingdon Clifford The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth.~ Bill Clinton The road to tyranny, we must remember, begins with the destruction of the truth.~ Bill Clinton We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans...~ Bill Clinton We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans...~ Bill Clinton The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people.~ Bill Clinton When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.... [However, now] there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it.~ Bill Clinton If the author of the Declaration of Independence were to utter such a sentiment today, the Post Office Department could exclude him from the mail, grand juries could indict him for sedition and criminal syndicalism, legislative committees could seize his private papers ... and United States Senators would be clamoring for his deportation that he... should be sent back to live with the rest of the terrorists.~ Frank I. Cobb The person who is right is the person who is the strongest, in this case, paradoxically, it's the cowards who are the brave ones, and they manage to impose their ideas on everyone else.~ Paulo Coelho While the people have property, arms in their hands, and only a spark of noble spirit, the most corrupt Congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny.~ Rev. 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