Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry. — Unknown Author
The first sign of tyranny is government's complicity in privatizing the commons for private gain. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Big Government is erecting a panopticon state - one that sees everything, and regulates everything. It’s great “customer service,” except that you can never get out of the store. — Mark Steyn
Government is waging war against the people. — L. Neil Smith
Coercion by government, the main fear of our founding fathers, is now its most common attribute. — Philip K. Howard
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves. — Ronald Reagan
When justices seize authority from the other branches of the federal government, as well as state and local governments, under the rubric of judicial review, that’s tyranny. — Mark Levin
The government is so out of control. It is so bloated and infested with fraud and deceit and corruption and abuse of power. — Ted Nugent
Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. — Ayn Rand
Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master! — Thomas Jefferson
An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty. — Eugene McCarthy
Government is not capable of caring. Government gets things done through coercion. They fine, they penalize, they tax, they confiscate, they jail, they bully to get what they want. — Rush Limbaugh
When a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense — to fight the government. — Alexander Hamilton
Only government can cause inflation, preserve monopoly, and punish enterprise. — William F. Buckley, Jr.
Short Government Tyranny Quotes
The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny. — Milton Friedman
When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship. — Harry S. Truman
The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice. — Baron de Montesquieu
Tyranny is always better organized than freedom. — Charles Peguy
An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger. — Confucius
Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government. — Edmund Burke
Government Tyranny Image Quotes
Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.
Tyranny Quotes
If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine. — Che Guevara
There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice. — Montesquieu
It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government. — Alexander Hamilton
When tyranny becomes law, rebellion is a right. — Simon Bolivar
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant. — Maximilien Robespierre
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. — Frederick Douglass
The government will one day be corrput and filled with liars and the people will flock to the one who tells the truth.
Dictators can always consolidate their tyranny by an appeal to patriotism. — Aldous Huxley
Our liberty will not be secured at the sword's point... We must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it. And when the people reaches that height, God will provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, tyranny will crumble like a house of cards, and liberty will shine out like the first dawn. — Jose Rizal
When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil. — Thomas Jefferson
Totalitarian Government Quotes
The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount…If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State. — Harry S. Truman
The United States of America took a giant step toward a totalitarian socialist government when the Supreme Court voted to uphold Obamacare, allowing the individual mandate for the government to force American citizens to buy health insurance whether they want to or not. — Charlie Daniels
A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers. — Friedrich August von Hayek
Love your country, but never trust its government.
The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist. — Winston Churchill
While an equality of rights under a limited government is possible and an essential condition of individual freedom, a claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers. — Friedrich August von Hayek
The European Union should not be prescribing an identity. We know what that's like, when a government tells its people how it should look; what it should be doing. That's the first step towards totalitarianism. — Bernard-Henri Levy
The government's first duty is to protect the people.
Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic. — Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
As long as human beings are imperfect, there will always be arguments for extending the power of government to deal with these imperfections. The only logical stopping place is totalitarianism -- unless we realize that tolerating imperfections is the price of freedom. — Thomas Sowell
There is danger that totalitarian governments, not subject to vigorous popular debate, will underestimate the will and unity of democratic societies where vital interests are concerned. — John F. Kennedy
Corporation: a miniature totalitarian state governed by a hierarchy of unelected officials who take a dim view of individualism, free speech, equality and eggheads. The backbone of all Western democracies. — Rick Bayan
Tyrannizes Quotes
Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace. — James Madison
So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. — Voltaire
When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner. — Montesquieu
Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinkng. They want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.
When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner. — Baron de Montesquieu
Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all. — Maximilien Robespierre
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. — Thomas Jefferson
The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself... Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.
A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason. — Noah Webster
Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots. — John Adams
... some people cannot bear the truth, no matter how tactfully it is told. No doubt the haughty, the tyrannical, the unmerciful, the impure and the fomentors of discord take a fierce exception to the Sermon on the Mount. — Mary Church Terrell
Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical. — Blaise Pascal
If there is no justice for the people, there be no peace for the government.
We spoke and acted as if, given the opportunity for self-government, we would quickly create utopias. Instead injustice, even tyranny, is rampant. — Julius Nyerere
Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates. — Benjamin Franklin
To those who cite the first amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions and everyday life, may I just say: The first amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny. — Ronald Reagan
It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity. — Alexander Hamilton
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. — Thomas Jefferson
The Founders knew that a democracy would lead to some kind of tyranny. The term democracy appears in none of our Founding documents. Their vision for us was a Republic and limited government. — Walter E. Williams
Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny. — John Hancock
I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man. — Thomas Jefferson
The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms. If they did, the people would certainly shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America did. — James Madison
Power is the great evil with which we are contending. We have divided power between three branches of government and erected checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. However, where is the check on the power of the judiciary? If we fail to check the power of the judiciary, I predict that we will eventually live under judicial tyranny. — Patrick Henry
It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. — C. S. Lewis
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
That, in its essence, is Fascism — ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
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
The Conservative does not despise government. He despises tyranny. This is precisely why the Conservative reveres the Constitution and insists on adherence to it. — Mark Levin
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. — Desmond Tutu
[Our Constitution] is an instrument for the people to restrain the government. — Patrick Henry
If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify. — Alexander Hamilton
A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude. — Calvin Coolidge
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. — Henry David Thoreau
The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves. — Donald James
The fundamental force behind the Second Amendment is to empower the people and give them the greatest measure of authority over the tyranny of runaway government. — Bob Schaffer
Once wide coercive powers are given to government agencies… such powers cannot be effectively controlled. — Friedrich August von Hayek
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. — Thomas Jefferson
No method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be divorced from local self-government. No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction, and decline. — Calvin Coolidge
Bilderberger Meeting: The world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. — David Rockefeller
Mr. President, passage of this bill will visit the heel of oppression on all the people, vitiate their constitutional shield against tyranny, and materially hasten the destruction of the best design for self-government yet devised by the minds of men. Its passage will mark one of the darkest days in history — Strom Thurmond
A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. — Plato
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. — Joseph Story
Any practice of business which would dominate the country by its own selfish interest is a destruction of equality of opportunity. Government in business, except in emergency, is also a destruction of equal opportunity and the incarnation of tyranny through bureaucracy. — Herbert Hoover
They that are discontented under monarchy, call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy, call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes, that want of government, is any new kind of government. — Thomas Hobbes
Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable. — Thomas Jefferson
The object of every free government is the public good, and all lesser interests yield to it. That of every tyrannical government, is the happiness and aggrandizement of one, or a few, and to this the public felicity, and every other interest must submit. — Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger
Government is best which governs least — Thomas Paine
As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The American attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both. — Chalmers Johnson
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. — Howard Zinn
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives. — Robert A. Heinlein
Democratic forms of government are vulnerable to mass prejudice, the so-called tyranny of the majority. — Maggie Gallagher
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