A Quote by Thomas Paine

Of all the tyrannies that effect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.

Thomas Paine

Quote Topics

Attempts Beyond Effect Eternity Every Grave Limited Live Mankind Other Pursue Religion Seeks Species Stride Tyranny Us World Worst

Quote Author

Thomas Paine
English - Activist
January 29, 1737 - June 8, 1809

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

Thomas Paine

The history of women is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.

Oscar Wilde

Of all tyrannies a country can suffer, the worst is the tyranny of the majority.

William Inge

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

Walter Bagehot

And of all plagues with which mankind are curst, Ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst.

Daniel Defoe

To rail and rant against tyranny is to manifest inferiority, for there is no tyranny but ignorance; to be conscious of one's powers is to lose consciousness of tyranny. Self government is not a remote aim. It is an intimate and inescapable fact. To govern oneself is a natural imperative, and all tyranny is the miscarriage of self government. The first requisite of freedom is to accept responsibility for the lack of it.

E.C. Riegel

Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery.

Milton Friedman

Democracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny.

Michael Parenti

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis

There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar and anonymous tyranny. It is all-permeating, all-thwarting; it blasts every budding novelty and sprig of genius with its omnipresent and fierce stupidity. Such a headless people has the mind of a worm and the claws of a dragon.

George Santayana

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C. S. Lewis

In more than half the nations of our world, torture certifies that the form of government is tyranny. Only tyranny, no matter how camouflaged, needs and employs torturers. Torture has no ideology.

Martha Gellhorn

... if your heart and your honest body can be controlled by the state, or controlled by community taboo, are you not then, and in that case, no more than a slave ruled by outside force? What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart, and that attempts to dictate the public career of an honest human body?