Galileo Galilei Quotes

Such is the terror--the crushing fear--which is inspired by one man over that multitude, which now submits to his decrees with a zeal, apparently as ardent, as it is certainly abject and submissive. There is not a complaint heard. The calm and dark waters of despotism are never disturbed by the slightest ripple. Not a breath of free thought or manly speech passes over them, but they lie dead and deep, into which every vestige of the people's liberty and freedom has sunk and disappeared.

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.

Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of.

Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

Despotism, be it financial or political, is vulnerable, unless it is believed to rest upon a moral sanction.

An attempt to scrutinize men’s thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.

... a step in the direction of tyranny.

... a tissue of machinations against the liberties of the country.

In a society where the individual is not free to pursue the truth, … there is neither progress, stability, nor security.

… to gag us from speaking truth, and discovering the tyrannies of bad men.

The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.

Tyranny will make an entire population into readers of poetry.

To circumscribe our freedom of thought because of the delicate sensibilities of suburban paper pushers is the most despicable type of totalitarian tyranny imaginable.

The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.

Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination.

If monarchy is corrupting - and it is - wait till you see what overt empire does to us.

Conquerors never, never conquer a nation to bring freedom. They brought control.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.

Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced on his throne.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.