21 Sep Kennedy and Quotations about the Great Idea: Tyranny and Despotism
“(Tyrants) are always either the masters or servants and never the friends of anybody; the tyrant never tastes of true freedom or friendship.”
-Plato
“Tyrannical government is altogether corrupt…(the tyrant is) guilty of sedition, since he encourages discord and sedition among his subjects, that he may lord over them more securely.”
-Thomas Aquinas
“(The tyrant) has dethroned himself and put himself in a state of war with his people, what shall hinder them from prosecuting him who is no king, as they would any other man who has put himself in a state of war with them?”
-John Locke
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
-James Madison
“The type of oppression which threatens democracies is different from anything there has ever been in the world before…Such old words as ‘despotism’ and ‘tyranny’ do not fit.”
-Alexis de Tocqueville
“…inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred.”
-Machiavelli
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