#despotism

Sanctions make a substantial contribution to power based on privation, and they have never hurt a single despot in the whole history of their use. ↗

— Roger Scruton

#international-sanctions #iraq #iraq-sanctions #kim-jong-il #north-korea

Each man has an equal social right to multiply his power of motion by all the social factors of civilization. Private property in any of these factors is inconsistent with this fundamental right; it must, obviously, prove a source of economic despotism and industrial slavery. ↗

— Daniel De Leon

#civilization #despotism #each #economic #equal

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#despotism #liberty #men #prefer #sea

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty. ↗

— George Washington

#party-dissension #party-politics #age

Universal suffrage is the only guarantee against despotism. ↗

— May Wright Sewall

#despotism #guarantee #only #suffrage #universal

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#expect #liberty #translated

Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government. ↗

— Philip G. Zimbardo

#fear #war-on-terror #freedom

The peoples owe all political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has had to be wrested inch by inch from the despots. ↗

— Rudolf Rocker

#freedom #government #privileges #rights #struggle

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#individuality #liberty #tyranny #liberty

First Afghanistan, now Iraq. So who's next? Syria? North Korea? Iran? Where will it all end?' If these illegal interventions are permitted to continue, the implication seems to be, pretty soon, horror of horrors, no murderously repressive regimes might remain. ↗

— Daniel Kofman

#antiwar-movement #axis-of-evil #despotism #foreign-policy #foreign-policy-of-the-us