Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
--
Volume iii, page 334.Edmund Burke
When kings the sword of justice first lay down,
They are no kings, though they possess the crown.
Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things,
The good of subjects is the end of kings.Daniel Defoe
The needs that are met by tyrants are as real as those to which freedom answers; sometimes they are more urgent. Tyrants promise security - and release from the tedium of everyday existence. To be sure, this is only a confused fantasy. The drab truth of tyranny is a life spent in waiting. But the perennial romance of tyranny comes from its promising its subjects a life more interesting than any they can contrive for themselves.
John N. Gray
You use the phrase “brutal Rebels.” Don’t be cheated in that way. There are enough “brutal Rebels” no doubt, but we have brutal officers and men too. I have had men brutally treated by our own officers on this raid [to Lynchburg, Va.]. And there are plenty of humane Rebels. I have seen a good deal of it on this trip. War is a cruel business and there is brutality in it on all sides, but it is very idle to get up anxiety on account of any supposed peculiar cruelty on the part of Rebels. Keepers of prisons in Cincinnati, as well as in Danville, are hard-hearted and cruel.
Rutherford B. Hayes
Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects.
Elizabeth I of England
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed —
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.Langston Hughes
Burke, Edmund
Burke, James (science historian)
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