Top 241 Despotism Quotes & Sayings - Page 2
Explore popular Despotism quotes.
Last updated on April 16, 2025.
The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.
It is odd to consider the connection between despotism and barbarity, and how the making one person more than man makes the rest less.
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.
To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
The faith in reason insists that the poverty of democracy offers a greater hope for mankind than the prosperity that attaches itself to aristocracy or despotism.
There is this of good in real evils; they deliver us, while they last, from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary.
Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.
Have any of our friends got off the Island with their families, or what must they submit to? Despotism or destruction, I fear, is their fate.
The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism.
Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.
Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.
Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.
Strange is this alien despotism of Sleep which takes two persons lying in each other's arms & separates them leagues, continents,asunder.
Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.
Despotism accomplishes great things illegally; liberty doesn't even go to the trouble of accomplishing small things legally.
It seems that the inevitable fate of man is never attain complete freedom: princes everywhere tend to despotism and the people to servitude.
Travelers describe a tree in the island of Java whose pestiferous exhalations blight every tiny blade of grass within the compass of its shade. So it is with despotism.
Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.
Throwing off despotism and tyranny is our history and part of our national identity - something in which we can take incredible pride.
[Restraints on the press] in all ages, have debauched morals, depressed liberty, shackled religion, supported despotism, and deluged the scaffold with blood.
Man is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or whether with freedom.
Beauty is the greatest of human powers. Any power without counterbalance or control becomes autocratic and leads to abuse and to folly. Despotism in a government is insanity; in woman, fantasy.
In matters editorial, I am a believer in totalitarian despotism. Most writers are lazy, difficult, selfish, thoughtless, and unreliable.
It has taken seas of blood to drown the idol of despotism, but the English do not think they bought their laws too dearly.
We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.
Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.
Other offences, even the greatest, are the violation of one law: despotism is the violation of all.
When I'm making something, I've always felt in charge and therefore able to call the shots. But what you've got to do is stop that turning into arrogance or despotism!
Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.
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.
To add to our misery and despair, a bloated aristocracy has sent to China - the greatest and oldest despotism in the world - for a cheap working slave.
When men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionately great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism.
Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.
Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings.
The moment you introduce a despotism in the world of thought, you succeed in making hypocrites - and you get in such a position that you never know what your neighbor thinks.
[the framers of the Constitution] intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism.
The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.
Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.
I am astonished but not discouraged by my enormous responsibility. Devoted both from affection and duty to the cause of the people, I shall combat with equal ardor aristocracy, despotism, and faction.
Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.
If Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters.
This [the U.S. Constitution] is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
Despotism is the only form of government which may with safety to itself, neglect the education of its infant poor.
Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism.
Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking.
Bookishness, highest literacy, every technique of cultural propaganda and training not only can accompany bestiality and oppression and despotism but at certain points foster it.
And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them.
That slow poison [slavery] is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our people. Every gentlemen here is born a petty tyrant, practiced in acts of despotism and cruelty.
A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.
A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations...is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism.
Protestants in France are under intolerable despotism. Although open persecution does not now exist, yet it depends upon the whim of the king, queen, parliament, or any of the ministry.
The market is sovereign and in the magic economy of the small entrepreneur there is no authoritarian center... in the political sphere... the equilibrium of powers prevails, and hence there is no chance of despotism.
Never may a man prone to believe scandal be a despot or a popular leader! Under his guidance, democracy itself will be despotism.
The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism.
Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence.
The chains of military despotism, once fastened upon a nation, ages might pass away before they could be shaken off.
It is far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism, for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one.
What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious.
To begin with unlimited freedom is to end with unlimited despotism.
