A Quote by George Santayana

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

Quote Topics

Anonymous Budding Claws Dragon Every Fierce Genius Hateful Headless Mind Novelty Omnipresent People Stupidity Tyranny Vulgar Worm

Quote Author

George Santayana
Spanish - Novelist
December 16, 1863 - September 26, 1952

Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth.

Theodore Roosevelt

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

Walter Bagehot

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

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 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

A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.

John Steinbeck

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

There is no tyranny more ferocious than the tyranny of morality. Everything is sacrificed to it.

P.D. Ouspensky

No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.

Edward Abbey

Tyranny is tyranny, no matter what its form; the free man will resist it if his courage serves.

Learned Hand

Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

We gain nothing by trading the tyranny of capital for the tyranny of labor.

Louis D. Brandeis

What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart?

June Jordan

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.

William Godwin

Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity - in short, of tyranny - and it is committed to making tyranny universal.