100 Despotic Quotes

Following is our list of despotic quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about how true it is.

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Famous Despotic Quotes

Democracy passes into despotism. — Plato

Despots prefer the friendship of the dog, who, unjustly mistreated and debased, still loves and serves the man who wronged him. — Charles Fourier

It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order. — Thomas Jefferson

Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy. — Jorge Luis Borges

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism. — John Stuart Mill

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance. - Thomas Paine

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance. — Thomas Paine

The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people. — Tom Clancy

Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects. — Clarence Darrow

The possession of arbitrary power has always, the world over, tended irresistibly to destroy humane sensibility, magnanimity, and truth. — Frederick Law Olmsted

An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins. — Ambrose Bierce

Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control. — Calvin Coolidge

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty. — Thomas Jefferson

Religions are the cradles of despotism. — Marquis De Sade

All power, even the most despotic, rests ultimately on opinion. — David Hume

In a dictatorship there is no choice, the elections are controlled, the police are the military, fear equals control, speech is suppressed, the economy is looted, the people are slaves. — Alex Jones

Short Despotic Quotes

  • Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms. — Aristotle
  • Love is a despot who spares no one. — African Proverbs
  • Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism? — Frederic Bastiat
  • To begin with unlimited freedom is to end with unlimited despotism. — Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot. — Thomas Babington Macaulay
  • Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. — Mary McCarthy
  • Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism. — Michel Foucault
  • The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement. — John Stuart Mill
  • Despotism can only exist in darkness. — James Madison
  • The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Despotic Image Quotes

Why She Quotes

Believe in God like the sun up in the sky, see science can tell us how but it can't tell us why. I seen a baby cry then seconds later she laughed, the beauty of life the pain never lasts. — J. Cole

My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut. I don't understand why she's crying. I'm the one who has to get a new girlfriend. — Anthony Jeselnik

The reason why men do not look to the Church today is that she has destroyed her own influence by compromise. — G. Campbell Morgan

I'm not saying girls are perfect, because we all know that's not true. But why be unfaithful to her if she was true to you. — Tupac Shakur

I love when you get boner spam for boner pills and the subject is Be a better lover. Oh, the boner was the problem on that? That's why I'm a bad lover? Do you have a pill that's gonna make me care if she cums? That would be a medical miracle. — Doug Stanhope

To me, crying is not a sign of weakness. She wants it that bad and she puts her whole heart into it. She had really high expectations, and that's why she's so good. She just had a bad game. — Kerri Walsh

Jace,” she said. “Why are you doing this to me?” “Because you’re lying to me. And you’re lying to yourself.” Jace’s eyes were blazing, and even though his hands were stuffed into his pockets, she could see that they were knotted into fists. — Cassandra Clare

I think it's great that she's not perfect and wasn't perfect. I think that's maybe why so many young girls and different people look up to Mac and respect her even more. — Catherine Bell

Even now, despite Angeline's watchfulness, she'd occasionally oscillate between random topics, like how shepherd's pie wasn't a pie at all and why it was pointless for her to take class in typing when technology would eventually develop robot companions to do it for us. — Richelle Mead

Callie always said Luce was incapable of brutal honesty and that was why she got herself stuck in so many crappy situations with guys whom she should have just told no. — Lauren Kate

How True It Is Quotes

A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

As you go through life's rich tapestry, you realize that most people you meet aren't fit to shine your shoes. It's a sad fact, but it's true. A good friend is someone who'd hide you if you were on the run for murder. How many of them do you know? — Lemmy Kilmister

The devil has convinced so many people that they are worthless. Each of us needs to stop and remember the cross-at the cross we will discover our true value-for it is here that we discover the price God was willing to pay for us, the depth of His love, and how much we are worth to Him. — Roy Lessin

No man is hurt but by himself. ...Literally by how he interprets what happens to him. If he focusses on how it could have been better, he will be hurt. If he focusses on how it could have been worse, he will be happy. The same is true for women too. — Diogenes

Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential. — Wassily Kandinsky

The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its children. - Nelson Mandela

The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its children. — Nelson Mandela

You have to relinquish the frame of the victim, no matter how true it may be. Whatever you point to as the oppressor, is the thing that you give your power to. — Alex Hormozi

All that chatter you hear from yuppie parents at the playground about how expensive it is to 'do' bathrooms? It's all true. Every word, and worse. — Tucker Carlson

Mass cannot be created from nothing, and mass cannot disintegrate into nothing. So, if a fat cell gets larger, there is a net accumulation of fat in that cell relative to how much goes out of it. And the converse is true. — Peter Attia

How often I have found that we grow to maturity not by doing what we like, but by doing what we should. How true it is that not every 'should' is a compulsion, and not every 'like' is a high morality and true freedom. — Karl Rahner

Despotism Quotes

The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it. — Robert E. Lee

Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty. — Immanuel Kant

Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest. — Baron de Montesquieu

We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. — Alexander Hamilton

A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars. — Will Durant

To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. — Thomas Jefferson

The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments. — George Mason

Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence. — John Kenneth Galbraith

At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats. — P. J. O'Rourke

The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation. — Baruch Spinoza

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More Despotic Quotes

The complete emancipation of women from the ties which held them back in the past, during the ages of despotism and ignorance, is a basic aim of the Party and the Revolution. Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated. — Saddam Hussein

Slave power crushes freedom of speech and of opinion. Slave power degrades labor. Slave power is arrogant, is jealous and intrusive, is cruel, is despotic, not only over the slave but over the community, the state. — Elizabeth Van Lew

The money power preys on the nation in times of peace, and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. — Abraham Lincoln

Sound money is also an essential element of a free society as it provides for an effective bulwark against despotic government. — Saifedean Ammous

Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible, omnipresent, despotic tyrant; this thousand-headed Hydra - the more dangerous for being composed of individual mediocrities... — H. P. Blavatsky

William: "I'm sure we can all pull together, sir." Vetinari: "Oh, I do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions. — Terry Pratchett

In the sacred precinct of that dwelling where the despotic woman wields the sceptre of fierce neatness, one treads as if he carried his life in his hands. — Henry Ward Beecher

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable. — Friedrich August von Hayek

Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots. — John Adams

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. — George Washington

Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings. — Raymond Aron

Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity? — Alexis de Tocqueville

It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed ... The government of the revolution is liberty's despotism against tyranny. — Maximilien Robespierre

Formerly, when a king died at Versailles the reign of his successor was immediately announced by the cry: "The king is dead, long live the king", in order to make it understood that despotism is immortal! Now an entire people, moved by a sublime instinct, cried: Long live the Republic! to teach the universe that tyranny died with the tyrant. — Maximilien Robespierre

Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism. — Barry Goldwater

Freemasonry teaches not merely temperance, fortitude, prudence, justice, brotherly love, relief, and truth, but liberty, equality, and fraternity, and it denounces ignorance, superstition, bigotry, lust tyranny and despotism. — Theodore Roosevelt

'Fair' is one of the most dangerous concepts in politics. Since no two people are likely to agree on what is 'fair,' this means that there must be some third party with power - the government - to impose its will. The road to despotism is paved with 'fairness'. — Thomas Sowell

It seems that the inevitable fate of man is never attain complete freedom: princes everywhere tend to despotism and the people to servitude. — Jean-Paul Marat

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. — Edmund Burke

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. — Thomas Jefferson

Be wicked, be brave, be drunk, be reckless, be dissolute, be despotic, be a suffragette, be anything you like, but for pity's sake be it to the top of your bent. — Violet Trefusis

In a despotic government, the only principle by which the tyrant who is to move the whole machine means to regulate and manage the people is fear, by the servile dread of his power. But a free government, which of all others is far the most preferable, cannot be supported without virtue. — Samuel Williams

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. — Joseph De Maistre

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses. — Aristotle

If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making? — Herbert Spencer

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others. — Thomas Jefferson

I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins. — Antony Flew

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