Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are! From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins, That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty's war, Be wasted for tyrants, or stagnate in chains.
Invidia Siculi non invenere tyranni / Tormentum majus=--Sicilian tyrants invented nothing that is a greater torment than envy.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get.
Pity is the virtue of the law, / And none but tyrants use it cruelly.
Of other tyrants short the strife, / But Indolence is king for life: / The despot twists, with soft control, / Eternal fetters round the soul.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write / Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs; / O, then his lines would ravish savage ears, / And plant in tyrants mild humility.
O Liberty! Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name! The tree of liberty only grows when watered by the blood of tyrants.
Of all the tyrants that the world affords, / Our own affections are the fiercest lords.
Manus h?c inimica tyrannis=--This hand is hostile to tyrants.
Necessity is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
L'arbre de la liberte ne croit qu'arrose par le sang des tyrans=--The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.
Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.--_Shakespeare._
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
"Eripuit c?lo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis"=--He snatched the lightning from heaven and the sceptre from tyrants. (
This hand, to tyrants ever sworn the foe, For Freedom only deals the deadly blow; Then sheathes in calm repose the vengeful blade, For gentle peace in Freedom's hallowed shade.
Ever since I arrived to a state of manhood, I have felt a sincere passion for liberty. The history of nations doomed to perpetual slavery, in consequence of yielding up to tyrants their natural born liberties, I read with a sort of philosophical horror; so that the first systematical and bloody attempt at Lexington, to enslave America, thoroughly electrified my mind, and fully determined me to take part with my country.
It is time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.
[Tyrants] use their power against the people in three manners. The first is, that they strive that those under their mastery be ever ignorant and timorous, because, when they be such, they may not be bold to rise against them, nor to resist their wills; and the second is, that their victims be not kindly and united among themselves, in such wise that they trust not one another….; and the third way is, that they strive to make them poor, and to put them upon great undertakings, which they can never finish, whereby they may have so much harm that it may never come into their hearts to devise anything against their ruler. [ Las Siete Partidas .]
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.
An artist is the magician put among men to gratify — capriciously — their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships — and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes — husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer.
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license"; and they will define and define freedom out of existence. Let the guarantee of free speech be in every man's determination to use it, and we shall have no need of paper declarations. On the other hand, so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
Tremblez, tyrans; vous etes immortels=--Tremble, ye tyrants; ye cannot die.
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God [Found among his papers after death.]
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. [Letter to W. S. Smith, B.12.356, Nov. 13, 1787.]
Lay the proud usurpers low! / Tyrants fall in every foe! / Liberty's in every blow! / Forward! let us die.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves.
~Despotism.~--It is difficult for power to avoid despotism. The possessors of rude health; the individualities cut out by a few strokes, solid for the very reason that they are all of a piece; the complete characters whose fibres have never been strained by a doubt; the minds that no questions disturb and no aspirations put out of breath,--these, the strong, are also the tyrants.--_Countess de Gasparin._
Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
This hand, to tyrants ever sworn the foe, / For freedom only deals the deadly blow: / Then sheathes in calm repose the vengeful blade / For gentle peace in freedom's hallowed shade.
This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
The tree of liberty only grows when watered by the blood of tyrants.
Again to the battle, Achaians! Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance! Our land, the first garden of Liberty's tree, It has been, and shall yet be, the land of the free.
Fear not that tyrants shall rule for ever, / Or the priests of the bloody faith; / They stand on the brink of that mighty river / Whose waves they have tainted with death.
It is found in every light of hope, It knows no bounds nor space It has risen in red and black and white, It is there in every race. It lies in the hearts of heroes dead, It screams in tyrants\x92 eyes, It has reached the peak of mountains high, It comes searing \x91cross the skies. It lights the dark of this prison cell, It thunders forth its might, It is "the undauntable thought", my friend, That thought that says "I'm right!"
If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.
Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
For pity is the virtue of the law, / And none but tyrants use it cruelly.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt, 1783
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. -- Voltarine de Cleyre
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd Garrison
14:16. Then, in process of time, wicked custom prevailing, this error was kept as a law, and statues were worshipped by the commandment of tyrants.
35:9. By reason of the multitude of oppressors they shall cry out: and shall wail for the violence of the arm of tyrants.
Another followed him, a soldier with disordered beard and flaming eyes. “You sit here and talk about giving the land to the peasants, and you commit an act of tyrants and usurpers against the peasants’ chosen representatives! I tell you--” he raised his fist, “If one hair of their heads is harmed, you’ll have a revolt on your hands!” The crowd stirred confusedly.
11:5. Many tyrants have sat on the throne, and he whom no man would think on, hath worn the crown.
It certainly is sad that turpitude heaped up should give a sum total of gayety, that by piling ignominy upon opprobrium the people should be enticed, that the system of spying, and serving as caryatids to prostitution should amuse the rabble when it confronts them, that the crowd loves to behold that monstrous living pile of tinsel rags, half dung, half light, roll by on four wheels howling and laughing, that they should clap their hands at this glory composed of all shames, that there would be no festival for the populace, did not the police promenade in their midst these sorts of twenty-headed hydras of joy. But what can be done about it? These be-ribboned and be-flowered tumbrils of mire are insulted and pardoned by the laughter of the public. The laughter of all is the accomplice of universal degradation. Certain unhealthy festivals disaggregate the people and convert them into the populace. And populaces, like tyrants, require buffoons. The King has Roquelaure, the populace has the Merry-Andrew. Paris is a great, mad city on every occasion that it is a great sublime city. There the Carnival forms part of politics. Paris,--let us confess it--willingly allows infamy to furnish it with comedy. She only demands of her masters--when she has masters--one thing: "Paint me the mud." Rome was of the same mind. She loved Nero. Nero was a titanic lighterman.
"Ah! you put on your man's voice, sir. That is well, I go. You, father, have not upheld me. Monsieur my father, monsieur my husband, you are tyrants. I shall go and tell grandpapa. If you think that I am going to return and talk platitudes to you, you are mistaken. I am proud. I shall wait for you now. You shall see, that it is you who are going to be bored without me. I am going, it is well."
No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence. We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed. When I mingled with other families I distinctly discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and gratitude assisted the development of filial love.
"See you then, Jacques," said Madame Defarge, wrathfully; "and see you, too, my little Vengeance; see you both! Listen! For other crimes as tyrants and oppressors, I have this race a long time on my register, doomed to destruction and extermination. Ask my husband, is that so."
Charles Evremonde, called Darnay. Released yesterday. Reaccused and retaken yesterday. Indictment delivered to him last night. Suspected and Denounced enemy of the Republic, Aristocrat, one of a family of tyrants, one of a race proscribed, for that they had used their abolished privileges to the infamous oppression of the people. Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, in right of such proscription, absolutely Dead in Law.
But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to get Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial, the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him. The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty--the deluge rising from below, not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened!
In the Nicolai Hall there was barely room to stand. The Mayor announced that troops were stationed at all the doors, prohibiting all exit and entrance, and that a Commissar had threatened arrest and the dispersal of the Municipal Duma. A flood of impassioned speeches from members, and even from the galleries, responded. The freely-elected City Government could not be dissolved by _any_ power; the Mayor’s person and that of all the members were inviolable; the tyrants, the provocators, the German agents should never be recognised; as for these threats to dissolve us, let them try--only over our dead bodies shall they seize this chamber, where like the Roman senators of old we await with dignity the coming of the Goths....
Certainly, despotism remains despotism, even under the despot of genius. There is corruption under all illustrious tyrants, but the moral pest is still more hideous under infamous tyrants. In such reigns, nothing veils the shame; and those who make examples, Tacitus as well as Juvenal, slap this ignominy which cannot reply, in the face, more usefully in the presence of all humanity.
It is certain, that, at that moment, no abuse of power, no violence, not one of the abominations of the worst tyrants, no action of Busiris, of Tiberius, or of Henry VIII., could have equalled this in atrocity, in the opinion of Marius; M. Fauchelevent taking his daughter off to England because he had business there.
We now have the names of several kings, Heiligo, Olaph (of Swedish origin), and his sons Chnob and Gurth. Then come a Danish ruler Sigeric, followed by Hardegon, son of Swein, coming from Norway. At some date after 916 we find mention of one "Hardecnuth Urm" ruling among the Danes. Adam of Bremen, from whom these details come, was himself uncertain whether "so many kings or rather tyrants of the Danes ruled together or succeeded one another at short intervals." Hardecnuth Urm is to be identified with the famous Gorm the old, who married Thyra Danmarkarbót: their son was Harold Bluetooth. (A. MW.) Entry: HISTORY
In the domain of intellect the advance of the French showed a no less dazzling and a no less universal activity; they sang as well as they fought, and their epics were worthy of their swordsmanship, while their cathedrals were hymns in stone as ardent as their soaring flights of devotion. In this period of intense religious life France was always in the vanguard. It was the ideas of Cluniac monks that freed the Church from feudal supremacy, and in the 11th century produced a Pope Gregory VII.; the spirit of free investigation shown by the heretics of Orleans inspired the rude Breton, Abelard, in the 12th century; and with Gerbert and Fulbert of Chartres the schools first kindled that brilliant light which the university of Paris, organized by Philip Augustus, was to shed over the world from the heights of Sainte-Geneviève. In the quarrels of the priesthood under the Empire it was St Bernard, the great abbot of Clairvaux, who tried to arrest the papacy on the slippery downward path of theocracy; finally, it was in Suger's church of St Denis that French art began that struggle between light against darkness which, culminating in Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, was to teach the architects of the world the delight of building with airiness of effect. The old basilica which contains the history of the monarchy sums up the whole of Gothic art to this day, and it was Suger who in the domain of art and politics brought forward once more the conception of unity. The courteous ideal of French chivalry, with its "delectable" language, was adopted by all seigniorial Europe, which thus became animated, as it were, by the life-blood of France. Similarly, in the universal movement of those forces which made for freedom, France began the age-long struggle to maintain the rights of civil society and continually to enlarge the social categories. The townsman enriched by commerce and the emancipated peasant tried more or less valiantly to shake off the yoke of the feudal system, which had been greatly weakened, if not entirely broken down, by the crusades. Grouped around their belfry-towers and organized within their gilds, they made merry in their free jocular language over their own hardships, and still more over the vices of their lords. They insinuated themselves into the counsels of their ignorant masters, and though still sitting humbly at the feet of the barons, these upright and well-educated servitors were already dreaming of the great deeds they would do when their tyrants should have vacated their high position, and when royalty should have summoned them to power. Entry: FRANCE
Several attempts have been made at various times in western Europe to reorganize the festival system on some other scheme than the Christian. Thus at the time of the French Revolution, during the period of Robespierre's ascendancy, it was proposed to substitute a tenth day (Décadi) for the weekly rest, and to introduce the following new festivals: that of the Supreme Being and of Nature, of the Human Race, of the French people, of the Benefactors of Mankind, of Freedom and Equality, of the Martyrs of Freedom, of the Republic, of the Freedom of the World, of Patriotism, of Hatred of Tyrants and Traitors, of Truth, of Justice, of Modesty, of Fame and Immortality, of Friendship, of Temperance, of Heroism, of Fidelity, of Unselfishness, of Stoicism, of Love, of Conjugal Fidelity, of Filial Affection, of Childhood, of Youth, of Manhood, of Old Age, of Misfortune, of Agriculture, of Industry, of our Forefathers, of Posterity and Felicity. The proposal, however, was never fully carried out, and soon fell into oblivion. Entry: FEASTS
The Merovingian kings, mere war-chiefs before the advent of Clovis, had after the conquest of Gaul become absolute hereditary monarchs, thanks to the disappearance of the popular assemblies and to the perpetual state of warfare. They concentrated in their own hands all the powers of the empire, judicial, fiscal and military; and even the so-called "rois fainéants" enjoyed this unlimited power, in spite of the general disorder and the civil wars. To make their authority felt in the provinces they had an army of officials at their disposal--a legacy, this, from imperial Rome--who represented them in the eyes of their various peoples. They had therefore only to keep up this established government, but they could not manage even this much; they allowed the idea of the common interests of kings and their subjects gradually to die out, and forgetting that national taxes are a necessary impost, a charge for service rendered by the state, they had treated these as though they were illicit and unjustifiable spoils. The taxpayers, with the clergy at their head, adopted the same idea, and every day contrived fresh methods of evasion. Merovingian justice was on the same footing as Merovingian finance: it was arbitrary, violent and self-seeking. The Church, too, never failed to oppose it--at first not so much on account of her own ambitions as in a more Christian spirit--and proceeded to weaken the royal jurisdiction by repeated interventions on behalf of those under sentence, afterwards depriving it of authority over the clergy, and then setting up ecclesiastical tribunals in opposition to those held by the dukes and counts. At last, just as the kingdom had become the personal property of the king, so the officials--dukes, counts, royal vicars, tribunes, _centenarii_--who had for the most part bought their unpaid offices by means of presents to the monarch, came to look upon the public service rather as a mine of official wealth than as an administrative organization for furthering the interests, material or moral, of the whole nation. They became petty local tyrants, all the more despotic because they had nothing to fear save the distant authority of the king's _missi_, and the more rapacious because they had no salary save the fines they inflicted and the fees that they contrived to multiply. Gregory of Tours tells us that they were robbers, not protectors of the people, and that justice and the whole administrative apparatus were merely engines of insatiable greed. It was the abuses thus committed by the kings and their agents, who did not understand the art of gloving the iron hand, aided by the absolutely unfettered licence of conduct and the absence of any popular liberty, that occasioned the gradual increase of charters of immunity. Entry: FRANCE
Fox, generous and trustful towards the movements of large masses of men, had very little intellectual grasp of the questions at issue in France. He treated the struggle as one simply for the establishment of free institutions; and when at last the crimes of the leaders became patent to the world, he contented himself with lamenting the unfortunate fact, and fell back on the argument that though England could not sympathize with the French tyrants, there was no reason why she should go to war with them. Entry: X
Indian history until Mahommedan times is marked by the unusual prominence of religious ideas, and is a record of intellectual development rather than of political events. Whatever national unity the Hindu peoples possessed came from the persistent and penetrating influence of the Brahman caste. Kings held a secondary position, and were generally regarded as adventitious tyrants, rather than as the heads and representatives of the nation. Even the great dynasties have left few traces, and it is with difficulty that the patient historian disinters the minor kingdoms from obscurity, but Indian religion, literature and art have influenced all Asia from Persia to Japan. Entry: 9
A second problem is the franchise reform of Cleisthenes. Aristotle in the _Politics_ (iii. 2. 3 = 1275 b) says that Cleisthenes created new citizens by enrolling in the tribes "many resident aliens and emancipated slaves."[4] But the Aristotelian _Constitution of Athens_ asserts that he gave "citizenship to the masses." These two statements are not compatible. It is perfectly clear that Cleisthenes is to be regarded as a democrat, and it would have been no bribe to the people merely to confer a boon on aliens and slaves. Moreover, a revision of the citizen-roll (_diapsephismus_) had recently taken place (after the end of the tyranny) and a great many citizens had been struck off the roll as being of impure descent ([Greek: _oi tô genei mê katharoi_]). This class had existed from the time of Solon, and, through fear of political extinction by the oligarchs, had been favourable to Peisistratus. Cleisthenes may have enfranchised aliens and slaves, but it seems certain that he must have dealt with these free Athenians who had lost their rights. Now Isagoras presumably did not carry out this revision of the roll (_diapsephismus_); as "the friend of the tyrants" (so _Ath. Pol._ 20; by Meyer, Busolt and others contest this) he would not have struck a blow at a class which favoured his own views. A reasonable hypothesis is that Cleisthenes was the originator of the measure of expulsion, and that he now changed his policy, and strengthened his hold on the democracy by reinstating the disfranchised in much larger numbers. The new citizens, whoever they were, must, of course, have been enrolled also in the (hitherto exclusive) phratry lists and the deme-rolls. Entry: A