Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.
It is when a people forget God, that tyrants forge their chains.
The Bible has, amazingly- no doubt with supernatural grace-survived its critics. The harder tyrants try to eliminate it and skeptics dismiss it, the better read it becomes.
The tyrant custom, most grave senators, Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war My thrice-driven bed of down.
May the Lord destroy all the tyrants of the church. Amen.
Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!
The just man having a firm grasp of his intentions, neither the heated passions of his fellow men ordaining something awful, nor a tyrant staring him in the face, will shake in his convictions.
What kind of tyrant punishes everyone just to get back at the few he's mad at? I mean, besides Chris Christie.
Neither Britain, a land fertile in tyrants, nor the people of Ireland, knew Moses and the prophets.
Treachery is noble when aimed at tyranny.
I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not freedom. Thus it seldom causes any public indignation when an enterprising tyrant claps down on one of his enemies. To most men it seems a natural proceeding.
We have to bring stability to Iraq, otherwise we will be faced with a future dilemma of sending our loved ones into harms way to stop a civil war or the rise of a new tyrant born from the instability that we created.
Propaganda replaces moral philosophy.
Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government?
Dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant can trickle when she wounds!
Men are still men. The despot's wickedness Comes of ill teaching, and of power's excess,-- Comes of the purple he from childhood wears, Slaves would be tyrants if the chance were theirs.
In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.
It is also in the interests of the tyrant to make his subjects poor. . . the people are so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for plotting.