A Quote by John F. Kennedy

Truth is a tyrant-the only tyrant to whom we can give our allegiance. The service of truth is a matter of heroism.

John F. Kennedy

Quote Topics

Allegiance Give Heroism Matter Only Our Service Truth Truth Is Tyrant Whom

Quote Author

John F. Kennedy
American - President
May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963

A man like me cannot live without a hobby-horse, a consuming passion - in Schiller's words a tyrant. I have found my tyrant, and in his service I know no limits. My tyrant is psychology. It has always been my distant, beckoning goal and now since I have hit upon the neuroses, it has come so much the nearer.

Sigmund Freud

The hand of Vengeance found the Bed To which the Purple Tyrant fled The iron hand crush'd the tyrant's head And became Tyrant in his stead.

William Blake

Power lies in reason, resolution, and truth. No matter how long the tyrant endures, he will be the loser at the end.

Khalil

A king ruleth as he ought, a tyrant as he lists, a king to the profit of all, a tyrant only to please a few.

Aristotle

Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Color does not necessarily denote quality, content or value. If a black is a tyrant, he is first and foremost a tyrant, then he incidentally is black. Bush is a tyrant and if he gathers around him black tyrants, they all have to be treated as they are being treated.

Harry Belafonte

Man is not by nature a tyrant, but becomes a tyrant by power conferred on him.

Lucretia Mott

Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.

John le Carre

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced on his throne.

Georges Clemenceau

Thou tyrant, tyrant Jealousy, Thou tyrant of the mind!

John Dryden

If Obama's a tyrant, then he's pretty lame for a tyrant. How many tyrants do you know that really suffer because they can't get cloture? Very few.

Jon Stewart

I pledge allegiance to the fair and balanced truth. Not the biased truth, Not the liest truth, But the highest truth.

Nas

"Magna Carta is the Law: Let the King look out." So it has always been with tyrants among our own people: when the King was tyrant, let him look out. And it has always been the same, and will be the same, whether the tyrant be the Barons, whether the tyrant be the Church, whether he be demagogue or dictator - let them look out.

Stanley Baldwin

A Tyrant is most tyrant to himselfe.

George Herbert

The right of a nation to kill a tyrant, in cases of necessity, can no more be doubted, than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. But killing one tyrant only makes way for worse, unless the people have sense, spirit and honesty enough to establish and support a constitution guarded at all points against the tyranny of the one, the few, and the many.

John Adams

At every step one has to wrestle for truth; one has to surrender for it almost everything to which the heart, to which our love, our trust in life, cling otherwise. That requires greatness of soul: the service of truth is the hardest service. What does it mean, after all, to have integrity in matters of the spirit? That one is severe against one's heart...that one makes of every Yes and No a matter of conscience.