Despotism Quotes

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.

The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.

Each man has an equal social right to multiply his power of motion by all the social factors of civilization. Private property in any of these factors is inconsistent with this fundamental right; it must, obviously, prove a source of economic despotism and industrial slavery.

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

Democracy passes into despotism.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

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.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

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.

The chains of military despotism, once fastened upon a nation, ages might pass away before they could be shaken off.

Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

Despotism is the only form of government which may with safety to itself, neglect the education of its infant poor.

Despotism is a long crime.

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.

Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

Universal suffrage is the only guarantee against despotism.

Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man.

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

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.

Despotism isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be.

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

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