Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism. — Mary McCarthy
It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order. — Thomas Jefferson
Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control. — Calvin Coolidge
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
Despots prefer the friendship of the dog, who, unjustly mistreated and debased, still loves and serves the man who wronged him. — Charles Fourier
Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy. — Jorge Luis Borges
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
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
The possession of arbitrary power has always, the world over, tended irresistibly to destroy humane sensibility, magnanimity, and truth. — Frederick Law Olmsted
Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy. — Bernard Crick
All power, even the most despotic, rests ultimately on opinion. — David Hume
Short Despotism Quotes
Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms. — Aristotle
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
Despotism Image Quotes
What Society Thinks Quotes
Democratic societies can't force people. Therefore they have to control what they think. — Noam Chomsky
Your own acts tell the world who you are and what kind of society you think it should be. — Ai Weiwei
Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it. — John Lennon
What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism. — Rand Paul
Are you doing what your heart desires, or living up to society's expectations, what friends and family think?
Because the moment you start doing what you love, what you truly feel in your heart, all your cells start working for you. — Ralph Smart
So, "normal" is really what society dictates as normal and if we're born in that world, we would see that as normal. But if you think about it for a second, is it really? — Jacque Fresco
Think clearly from the ground up. Understand and explain from first principles. Ignore society and politics. Acknowledge what you have. Control your emotions. — Naval Ravikant
The little things, I can obey. But the big things - how we think, what we value - those you must choose yourself. You can't let anyone - or any society - determine those for you. — Morrie Schwartz
The largest problem of all is really a network of people like George Soros, who are committed Marxists, who see the destruction of the United States and of Western Europe as a means to an end of creating what United States think will be this global society and the planet. — Douglas Macgregor
As we get older, a lot of societies, education systems and workplaces make us feel that playing is a waste of time. We end up suppressing stupidly brilliant questions for what we think are more serious responsibilities. — Jessica Walsh
Despotic 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
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 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
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
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
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
In Conclusion
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