Oppressive Power Quotes

Why do we love this trial by jury? Because it prevents the hand of oppression from cutting you off.

Oppression is the essence of power.

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.

...the Church is the merciless heart of the State.

We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.

Every one with this writ may be a tyrant; if this commission be legal, a tyrant in a legal manner, also, may control, imprison, or murder any one within the realm.

You must strike in measure, when there are many to strike on one Anvile.

There is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassailable, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam. One of the main reasons why the very gallant Russian poet Gumilev was put to death by Lenin's ruffians thirty odd years ago was that during the whole ordeal, in the prosecutor's dim office, in the torture house, in the winding corridors that led to the truck, in the truck that took him to the place of execution, and at that place itself, full of the shuffling feet of the clumsy and gloomy shooting squad, the poet kept smiling.

The tyranny of a multitude [mob] is a multiplied tranny.

The possession of power does not necessarily imply its unrighteous or oppressive use, although it generally awakes suspicion.

When forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.

Ignorant power is a bane!

If the ministers of the Church have often permitted nations to revolt for Heaven's cause, they never allowed them to revolt against real evils or known violencess. It is from Heaven that the chains have come to fetter the minds of mortals.