This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Charles De Montesquieu, formally Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Leo Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of nonresistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in selfsuffering. He admits of no exception to whittle down this great and divine law of love. He applies it to all the problems that trouble mankind.
Law | Life | Life | Love | Method | Problems | Reform | Tyranny | Trouble |
Pat Buchanan, fully Patrick Joseph "Pat" Buchanan
How did it happen that a republic born of a rebellion against a king and parliament we did not elect has fallen under a tyranny of judges we did not elect?
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
Progress has always been achieved by probing well-entrenched and well-founded forms of life with unpopular and unfounded values. This is how man gradually freed himself from fear and from the tyranny of unexamined systems.
Five hundred years of ecological mayhem and social tyranny is a relatively short time for humanity to have learned to understand its self-created patterns of systematic pillage. The insanity of human destructiveness may be matched by an older grace and intelligence that is fastening us together in ways we have never before seen or imagined... We live in community, not alone, and any sense of separateness that we harbor is illusion.
Grace | Humanity | Insanity | Intelligence | Sense | Time | Tyranny | Understand |
There is no tyranny more ferocious than the tyranny of morality. Everything is sacrificed to it.
Tyranny |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society. The peoples of the world are becoming profoundly dissatisfied and are not appeased by the promise of the social-democrats to patch up the State into a new engine of oppression.
Freedom | Oppression | Promise | Tyranny | World |
Animal Liberation will require greater altruism on the part of human beings than any other liberation movement. The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or boycotts. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that morality counts for nothing when it clashes with self-interest, as the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels and terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible?
Altruism | Capacity | Challenge | Morality | Nothing | Position | Power | Tyranny | Will |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.
Freedom | Oppression | Tyranny | World |
Pierre Trudeau, aka Pierre Elliott Trudeau, fully Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau
In reality, though, the first thing to ask of history is that it should point out to us the paths of liberty. The great lesson to draw from revolutions is not that they devour humanity but rather that tyranny never fails to generate them.
Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions.
It was not at all the intention of the Jewish teachers and sages of old to teach the fear of God. Many of their utterances regarding the relationship between God and man have been greatly misunderstood and therefore misinterpreted. This misunderstanding has been due greatly to the dual meaning of the Hebrow word, "Yirah." "Yirah" means both to reverence and to fear. This word, employed numerous times throughout the Pentateuch with reference to man's attitude toward God, may lead to the translation of either, "Fear thy God," or, "Reverence thy God." It is clear that the translators of the Bible did not consider the significance of the latter meaning and its import upon both the ethics and the character of the race. To revere our God means that we are to look upon him as a Father, a Shepherd, to guide our steps and watch over our destiny ; it means that we are His children and His flock, that He has brought us into existence as an expression of His love. It means that the whole universe is an outflow of His love,and in response to His profound love, we revere His name. To say that God requests fear is to limit his powers, to lower Him to the level of an earthly king, who sways his people with the tyranny of fear. The true attributes of God are outlined in Exodus 34 :6, "The Lord, the Lord God is merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth."
Bible | Character | Children | Destiny | Ethics | Existence | Fear | God | Intention | Lord | Man | Meaning | Means | People | Relationship | Reverence | Teach | Tyranny | Universe | God | Bible | Old |
The tyranny of the ignoramuses is insurmountable and assured for all time.
Tyranny |
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
Freedom is necessary for two reasons. It's necessary for the individual, because the individual, no matter how good the society is, every individual has hopes, fears, ambitions, creative urges, that transcend the purposes of his society. Therefore we have a long history of freedom, where people try to extricate themselves from tyranny for the sake of art, for the sake of science, for the sake of religion, for the sake of the conscience of the individual
Conscience | Good | History | Individual | People | Society | Tyranny | Society |
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.
Aggression | Consequences | Inheritance | Tyranny |
To seek for utopia is to end in disaster, the conservative says: we are not made for perfect things.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
Tyranny |
Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.