#tyranny

Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them. ↗

— George Santayana

#enslave #free #instruments #seldom #their

My optimism is not based primarily on the successful march of democracy in recent times but rather is based on the experience of having lived in a fear society and studied the mechanics of tyranny that sustain such a society. ↗

— Natan Sharansky

#democracy #experience #fear #having #lived

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. ↗

— Adlai E. Stevenson

#communism #conformity #death #making #organization

It is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men's marriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize and segregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a few great hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens, as nurses do with a family of children. It is not anarchy, it is tyranny; but tyranny is a workable thing. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#eugenics #tyranny #family

it is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant. ↗

— Max Weber

#morality-without-religion #oppression #politics #tyranny #religion

Most gun control arguments miss the point. If all control boils fundamentally to force, how can one resist aggression without equal force? How can a truly “free” state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? It cannot. ↗

— Tiffany Madison

#freedom #government-corruption #gun-control #gun-laws #gun-rights

If we are going to save this country, if we are going to reestablish that belief in God, it's up to us. If we don't do it, who will? ↗

— Bob Riley

#away #budding #democracies #due #half

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. ↗

— Edmund Burke

#laws #sort #tyranny #worst

BLOODY LIPS The bloody wound Of the gladiator Gurgles out life's end. The cries of acclimations from the stands Fill the sky with raging tigers. Waving their arms about to incite the masses The aging notables add an air of dignity to the arena. Making their separate entries they K N E E L over the still-warm corpses Of the young. Their withered lips they pose Upon the fresh flowing wounds And, to prolong their lives – so they believe, Suck, ravenously suck out the blood, blood, blood. Fresh blood from the sun Flowing into filthy veins As into sewage pipes, And thus the Heart of the Nation is abandoned. ↗

— Visar Zhiti

#bloodsport #gladiators #oppression #tyranny #vampire

In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People." (Canton, OH, Anti-War Speech, June 16, 1918) ↗

— Eugene Victor Debs

#exploitation #fundamentalism #oppression #patriotism #religion