A Quote by Charles Caleb Colton

Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.

Charles Caleb Colton

Quote Topics

Before Despotism Destroyed Exist Happen Liberty More Nation Night Press Set Sun Than Until

Quote Author

Charles Caleb Colton
English - Writer
1780 - 1832

This perfected body can be compared to a mirror, and the human spirit to the sun. Nevertheless, if the mirror breaks, the bounty of the sun continues; and if the mirror is destroyed or ceases to exist, no harm will happen to the bounty of the sun, which is everlasting. This spirit has the power of discovery; it encompasses all things.

Abdu'l-Bahá

Despotism and freedom of the press cannot exist together.

Leon Gambetta

In 1945, there were more people killed, more buildings destroyed, more high explosives set off, more fires burning than before or since.

Stephen Ambrose

Liberty begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism brings about liberty once again. Millions of human beings have perished without being able to make any of these systems triumph.

Honore de Balzac

[Restraints on the press] in all ages, have debauched morals, depressed liberty, shackled religion, supported despotism, and deluged the scaffold with blood.

James Madison

Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of temperance, for the sake of morality, or for the sake of anything. It is of more value than everything. Yet some people would destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds. Liberty sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun does to life.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Our government has become too responsive to trivial or ephemeral concerns, often at the expense of more important concerns or an erosion of our liberty, and it has made policy priorities more dependent on where TV journalists happen to point their cameras. . . . As a nation we have lost our sense of tragedy, a recognition that bad things happen to good people. A nation that expects the government to prevent churches from burning, to control the price of bread or gasoline, to secure every job, and to find some villain for every dramatic accident, risks an even larger loss of life and liberty.

William A. Niskanen

Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism?

Frederic Bastiat

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

Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control. Where ever the cause of liberty is making its way, one of its highest accomplishments is the guarantee of the freedom of the press.

Calvin Coolidge

Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing Night! Night of south winds! Night of the large, few stars! Still, nodding Night! Mad, naked, Summer Night!

Walt Whitman

Because I have no consistent schedule as an actor, it was difficult to develop one as a writer. Ideally, I'd like to write first thing in the morning, every day. But sometimes I'm called to set before the sun comes up, or I've worked late the night before, or I'm on a plane.

Lauren Graham

[ Alexis de] Tocqueville said it in 1835, and it's as true today as it was then: 'Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is more needed in democratic societies than in any other.'

Paul Kengor

Any nation which for an extended period puts pleasure before liberty is likely to lose the liberty it misused.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

The fact throughout history is that whenever government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues. Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other.