Quotes about Tyranny

Humans are designed to worship God and exercise responsibility in his world. But when humans worship idols instead, so that their image-bearing humanness corrupts itself into sin, missing the mark of the human vocation, they hand over their power to those same idols. The idols then use this power to tyrannize and ultimately to destroy their devotees and the wider world. But when sins are forgiven, the idols lose their power.

Secular ideologies preach liberty, but they practice tyranny.

Secular ideologies preach liberty but practice tyranny.

I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.

Still, you lord it over My people and do not allow them to go.

Like a roaring lion or a charging bear is a wicked ruler over a helpless people.

He exploited our people and oppressed our fathers, forcing them to abandon their infants so they would die.

all power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely").

King clung to nonviolence because he profoundly believed that only a movement based on love could keep the oppressed from becoming a mirror image of their oppressors. He wanted to change the hearts of the white people, yes, but in a way that did not in the process harden the hearts of the blacks he was leading toward freedom. Nonviolence, he believed, 'will save the Negro from seeking to substitute one tyranny for another.

It is a pitiable cowardice to try to overcome fear by ignoring the facts. We do not become masters of our fate by saying that we are. And such blatancy of pride, futile as it is, is not even noble in its futility. It would be noble to rebel against a capricious tyrant, but it is not noble to rebel against the moral law of God.

Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. Inaugural Adress, January 20, 1961

Truth is a tyrant-the only tyrant to whom we can give our allegiance. The service of truth is a matter of heroism.