The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.[Le bien-être du peuple en particulier a toujours été l’alibi des tyrans, et il offre de plus l’avantage de donner bonne conscience aux domestiques de la tyrannie.]
Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.[Das sind, aus Eigennutz geboren, die zwei Erziehungsmittel der Eltern: Tyrannei und Sklaverei in allen Abstufungen.]
Tyranny is a habit; it is able to, and does develop finally into a disease.[Тиранство есть привычка; оно одарено развитием, оно развивается, наконец, в болезнь.]
There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, – and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.
The tyranny that now exists is actual. That which may exist in the future is merely potential. If we are always to draw back from change with the thought that the change may be for the worse, then there is no hope at all of ever escaping injustice.
The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.[On appelle tyran le souverain qui ne connaît de lois que son caprice.]
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
Liberation from the tyranny of the body contributes to greatness, but just as much to greatness in sin as to greatness in virtue.
If we must have a tyrant – let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher’s cleaver.
I knew him tyrannous; and tyrants’ fears decrease not, but grow faster than the years.
Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.
