#despotism

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

— William Henry Harrison

#away #before #chains #could #despotism

Sanctions make a substantial contribution to power based on privation, and they have never hurt a single despot in the whole history of their use. ↗

— Roger Scruton

#international-sanctions #iraq #iraq-sanctions #kim-jong-il #north-korea

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. ↗

— Daniel De Leon

#civilization #despotism #each #economic #equal

The peoples owe all political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has had to be wrested inch by inch from the despots. ↗

— Rudolf Rocker

#freedom #government #privileges #rights #struggle

First Afghanistan, now Iraq. So who's next? Syria? North Korea? Iran? Where will it all end?' If these illegal interventions are permitted to continue, the implication seems to be, pretty soon, horror of horrors, no murderously repressive regimes might remain. ↗

— Daniel Kofman

#antiwar-movement #axis-of-evil #despotism #foreign-policy #foreign-policy-of-the-us

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart. ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#equality #exercise #give #great #great souls

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. ↗

— Barry Goldwater

#been #conformity #creative #despotism #differences

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

— Frederic Bastiat

#despotism #destruction #including #legal #liberty

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. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#defense #despotism #destroy #doors #everywhere

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. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#crushes #despotism #enforcing #god #individuality