In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.

If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher's cleaver.

Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.

No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.

A police state finds that it cannot command the grain to grow.

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.

Tyranny is yielding to the lust of the governing.

Like Cato, give his little senate laws, and sit attentive to his own applause.

Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know, but leech-like to their fainting country cling, till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, -- a people starved and stabbed in the untilled field...

The worst form of tyranny the world has ever known the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.