Tyrant Quotes

Any excuse will serve a tyrant. (Aesop)
The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them. View quote
Emily Brontë
The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins. View quote
Søren Kierkegaard
In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary. View quote
Emil Cioran
In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws. View quote
Emil Cioran
A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Love is a tyrant sparing none. View quote
Pierre Corneille
This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance. View quote
Philip K. Dick
Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant and of all tame, a flatterer. View quote
Ben Jonson
How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words! View quote
Samuel Adams
Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth. (François de La Rochefoucauld)
Chivalry!---why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection---the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant ---Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword. View quote
Walter Scott
The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly Weather, is an impassive-faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his back for a treacherous stab. View quote
Joseph Conrad
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms. View quote
Aristotle
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side. View quote
Aristotle
The only tyrant I accept in this world is the "still small voice" within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority. View quote
Mahatma Gandhi
We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim..." Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. "Rats," he said; "stinking curs. They are all running away. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
I never revolted in vain, as a rebel or as a tyrant, but I rose seeking reformation for the nation of my grandfather Muhammad. I intend to enjoin good and forbid evil, to act according to the traditions of my grandfather, and my father ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib. View quote
Husayn ibn Ali
Cruelty is a tyrant that's always attended with fear. View quote
Thomas Fuller
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The things... which are proper to the understanding no other man is used to impede, for neither fire, nor iron, nor tyrant, nor abuse, touches it in any way. When it has been made a sphere, it continues a sphere. (Marcus Aurelius)
I didn't want to kill a man. I'm not capable of killing a man. I wanted to kill a tyrant. View quote
Oriana Fallaci
"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. View quote
Stanley Baldwin
O slavish man! will you not bear with your own brother, who has God for his Father, as being a son from the same stock, and of the same high descent? But if you chance to be placed in some superior station, will you presently set yourself up for a tyrant? View quote
Epictetus
Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort. View quote
Marshall McLuhan